Ireland's  Cause 

IN 

England's  Parliament 


Justin  McCarthy 


IRELAND'S    CAUSE 
IN   ENGLAND'S   PARLIAMENT. 


IRELAND'S   CAUSE 

IN 

ENGLAND'S    PARLIAMENT 

BY 

justin  McCarthy,  m.p. 

WITH   PREFACE  BY 

JOHN    BOYLE    O'REILLY 


BOSTON 

TlCKNOR    AND    COMPANY 

211,  Cremont  Street 

ii 


Copyright,  1887, 
By  TICKNOR   AND   COMPANY. 


RAND   AVERY   COMPANY, 

ELECTROTYPERS   AND   PRINTERS, 

BOSTON. 


PREFACE. 


npO  win  with  a  minority  is  surely  the  highest 
achievement  of  a  parliamentary  party.  It 
means  an  appeal  to  the  nobler  elements  of  the 
opposition.  It  is  more  than  victory :  it  is  con- 
version. 

For  seven  centuries,  Ireland  has  fought  England 
physically,  —  a  fight  of  incredible  courage,  for  the 
odds  were  hopeless  :  five  to  thirty  in  number,  five 
to  a  thousand  in  wealth  and  organization.  Weight 
conquered ;  and  every  century  and  every  year  added 
a  new  chain  to  the  vanquished. 

But  as  soon  as  Ireland  lays  down  the  pike  and 
takes  up  the  word,  her  advance  begins.  She  could 
not  reach  her  enemy's  heart  with  a  sword :  she 
captures  her  soul  with  an  argument. 

The  progress  of  the  Irish  Parliamentary  party 
in  the  English  House  of  Commons  is  a  study  for 

<*o&  i        v 


VI  PREFACE. 

all  minorities.  It  is  a  story  of  profound  interest 
to  readers  not  akin  to  the  Celt.  It  promises  to 
be  the  first  radical  national  reform  by  legislation, 
without   revolution,  of  European   history. 

The  story  of  this  movement  and  party  is  told 
by  the  proper  hand  when  Justin  McCarthy  is  the 
historian.  He  is  part  of  it,  and  a  large  part.  He 
is  the  vice-president  of  the  Irish  Parliamentary 
party,  and  he  has  the  trained  quality  of  the  objec- 
tive seer :  so  that  his  word,  always  dispassionate 
and  considerate,  has  double  and  lasting  value. 

JOHN   BOYLE   O'REILLY. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

CHAPTER 

I.    What  is  Ireland's  Cause? l 

II.    How  Ireland  lost  her  Parliament 17 

III.    Ireland  will  not  have  the  Union 38 

IV.    Obstruction 56 

V.    The  Change  of  Leadership 73 

VI.    What  came  of  Obstruction 9° 

VII.    The  Protestant  Minority II2 

VIII.    The  Making  of  the  Nation I25 

vii 


IRELAND'S    CAUSE    IN    ENGLAND'S 
PARLIAMENT. 


CHAPTER  I. 

what  is  Ireland's  cause? 

THE  title  which  I  have  chosen  for  this  book 
has  at  least  the  advantage  of  expressing  with 
precision  and  with  sufficient  fulness  my  own  idea 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  task  I  am  undertaking.  My 
desire  is  to  make  clear  to  Americans  what  is  the 
distinct  national  cause  which  the  Irish  parliamentary 
party  represent  in  the  English  Parliament,  and  why 
Ireland  should  have  a  national  cause  to  plead  there. 
I  desire  to  describe  the  methods  her  representatives 
have  adopted  in  order  to  accomplish  that  success, 
which  is  now  already,  to  all  appearance,  within  meas- 
urable distance,  to  quote  Mr.  Gladstone's  famous 
expression.  I  desire  to  describe  the  forces  of  oppo- 
sition to  the  Irish  cause,  as  well  as  the  forces  that 
are  friendly  to  it. 


2  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

I  have  been  in  the  struggle,  and  I  know  the  men. 
In  that  sense  I  have  a  story  to  tell.  Eight  years 
ago,  I  ventured  to  say  to  the  House  of  Commons, 
that  before  very  long  the  question  of  Home  Rule 
would  make  and  unmake  ministries,  and  that,  when 
it  came  to  that,  the  cause  of  Home  Rule  would  be 
virtually  won.  It  has  come  to  that  now.  The  cause 
of  Home  Rule  makes  and  unmakes  ministries ;  it 
will  make  and  unmake  ministries  until  Home  Rule  is 
won. 

In  the  mean  time,  it  may  interest  Americans  to 
hear  the  story  of  the  Irish  movement  told  by  one 
who  has  marched  in  the  ranks,  who  has  shouldered 
a  musket  or  trailed  a  pike  in  the  cause  of  Home 
Rule.  What  is  Home  Rule  ?  What  is  the  demand 
that  the  Irish  representatives,  speaking  in  the  name 
and  with  the  authority  of  the  people  of  Ireland,  are 
presenting  to  the  Imperial  Parliament  at  West- 
minster ?  Do  we  ask  for  any  thing  new  ;  any  thing 
unprecedented  ;  any  thing  exceptional  ;  any  thing  un- 
reasonable in  principle,  or  likely  to  be  dangerous  in 
its  operation  to  the  welfare  of  the  empire  ?  No,  we 
ask  for  nothing  of  the  kind.  Some  English  news- 
papers write,  even  still,  as  if  the  proposal  for  a  Home 
Rule  system  for  Ireland  was  an  audacious  innova- 
tion.    But  it  is  not  an  innovation ;  it  would  be  sim- 


WIIA  T  IS  IRELAND 'S   CA  USE  ?  3 

ply  a  restoration.  Some  English  public  men  talk 
even  still,  as  if  the  union  of  the  English  and  Irish 
Parliaments  into  one  organization  were  at  least  as 
old  as  the  flood.  But  the  Act  of  Union  is,  in  the 
historical  sense,  a  thing  of  the  day  before  yesterday. 
The  Act  of  Union  came  into  force  on  the  first  day  in 
the  first  year  of  the  present  century.  Up  to  that 
time,  and  almost  since  the  beginning  of  England's 
connection  with  Ireland,  Ireland  had  always  her 
Irish  Parliament  sitting  in  Dublin,  to  administer 
the  affairs  and  see  to  the  national  interests  of  the 
country.  Undoubtedly  the  Irish  Parliament  was  at 
various  stages  of  its  existence,  very  unlike  in  its 
conditions  to  what  we  now  in  America  and  in  Eng- 
land would  regard  as  a  national  assembly.  It  was 
not  representative  in  the  modern  sense,  or  in  the 
true  sense  ;  and  it  was  wretchedly  dependent  on  the 
Crown,  or  on  that  council  which  was  the  mere  instru- 
ment of  the  Crown.  Still  it  was  a  Parliament,  and 
asserted  its  authority  when  it  could.  So  long  ago 
as  1372,  there  was  a  conflict  of  authority  between  the 
English  Parliament  and  the  Irish.  The  English  Par- 
liament insisted  that  Ireland  must  raise  a  larger  sum 
to  meet  the  charges  of  Irish  administration.  The 
King  summoned  the  Irish  Parliament  over  to  Eng- 
land to  debate  on  the  disputed  question.     The  Irish 


4  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

Parliament  replied  by  a  declaration,  that  they  were 
in  no  wise  bound  to  send  a  delegation  to  England ; 
but  that  nevertheless,  as  it  was  the  King's  wish,  they 
would  do  so,  specially  reserving  all  their  own  rights, 
and  of  course,  among  the  rest,  the  right  to  grant  or 
refuse  the  additional  subsidy  asked  of  them. 

Poynings'  Act,  as  it  is  called,  the  Act  which  was 
projected  and  carried  in  1494,  by  Sir  Edward 
Poynings,  deputy-governor  of  Ireland,  reduced  the 
Irish  Parliament  to  a  certain  degree  of  dependency 
on  the  Crown,  and  the  advisers  of  the  Crown  in 
England,  and  on  the  English  Parliament.  In  other 
words,  Sir  Edward  Poynings  obtained  the  passing  of 
legislation  which  decreed  that  an  Irish  Parliament 
should  not  be  summoned  until  the  principles  of  any 
measures  intended  to  be  submitted  to  such  Irish  Par- 
liament had  been  submitted  to  the  English  Govern- 
ment and  approved  of  by  them.  Poynings'  Act  also 
extended  to  Ireland  any  legislation  passed  for  England 
by  the  English  Parliament.  Undoubtedly  Poynings' 
Act,  or  Acts,  reduced  the  power  of  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment so  much  as  to  make  it  little  better  than  a  mere 
recording  agency  of  the  will  of  the  English  sove- 
reign. But  it  will  have  to  be  borne  in  mind,  that  at 
that  time  the  English  Parliament  itself  was  hardly 
anything  better  than  a  mere  recording  agency  of  the 


WHA  T  IS  IRELAND'S   CA  USE  ?  5 

will  of  the  English  sovereign.  The  English  Parlia- 
ment sometimes  chafed  at  the  yoke,  and  so  too  did 
the  Parliament  of  Ireland.  In  March,  1720,  an  Act 
was  passed  to  settle  a  conflict  of  authority  between 
the  two  Parliaments.  A  measure  was  introduced  by 
the  English  Government,  the  preamble  of  which 
declared  that  "attempts  have  lately  been  made  to 
shake  off  the  subjection  of  Ireland  unto  and  depend- 
ence upon  the  imperial  crown  of  this  realm,  which 
will  be  of  dangerous  consequence  to  Great  Britain 
and  Ireland."  The  meaning  of  this  portentous  pre- 
amble was,  that  the  Irish  House  of  Lords  persisted 
in  assuming  the  right  to  act  as  the  final  court  of 
appeal,  "to  examine,  correct,  and  amend  the  judg- 
ments and  decrees  of  the  courts  of  justice  in  the 
kingdom  of  Ireland."  The  bill  declared  that  the 
Irish  House  of  Lords  had  no  such  right,  and  that 
the  right  now  entirely  belonged  to  the  House  of 
Lords  in  England.  The  Act  was  passed,  of  course, 
in  the  English  Parliament.  But  a  great  English 
peer,  the  Duke  of  Leeds,  recorded  his  protest 
against  it,  on  the  ground,  among  many  others,  that 
this  "  taking-away  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Lords' 
House  in  Ireland  may  be  a  means  to  disquiet  the 
lords  there,  and  disappoint  the  King's  affairs."  I 
dwell  on  these  facts  to  show  that  for  centuries  there 


6  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

was  a  distinct  Irish  Parliament,  endowed  with  au- 
thority of  some  sort,  to  manage  the  affairs  of  Ireland. 
Of  course  it  is  a  fact,  that  during  the  greater  part  of 
its  history  it  was  simply  a  Parliament  of  English 
Protestants  settled  in  Ireland,  and  having  no  manner 
of  sympathy  with  the  vast  majority  of  the  Irish 
people.  But  it  is  also  a  fact,  that  the  sympathies  of 
the  Irish  people,  whenever  they  had  an  opportunity 
of  showing  them,  were  with  the  Irish  Parliament, 
and  were  for  upholding  its  authority  against  the 
English  Parliament,  simply  because  it  was  the  Irish 
Parliament ;  because,  at  least,  it  was  called  the 
Irish  Parliament ;  because  it  recognized  in  name,  if 
only  in  name,  the  existence  of  an  Ireland  which  was 
entitled  to  a  national  Parliament. 

Of  course  it  did  not  represent  the  Irish  people. 
But  neither  did  the  English  Parliament  at  that  time, 
or  for  long  after,  represent  the  English  people.  The 
English  Parliament  was,  until  a  time  very  near  to  our 
own,  absolutely  dependent  on  the  personal  will  and 
even  the  personal  caprice  of  the  sovereign.  Queen 
Victoria  is  positively  the  first  really  constitutional 
sovereign  who  ever  sat  on  the  throne  of  Great 
Britain.  As  the  English  Parliament  kept  advancing 
step  by  step  in  independence,  the  Irish  Parliament 
kept  advancing  too ;  and  I  shall  show  presently,  that, 


WHAT  IS   IRELAND'S   CAUSE?  7 

on  at  least  one  great  question  of  civil  liberty,  the 
Irish  Parliament,  with  all  its  faults,  was  about  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ahead  of  the  Parliament  at 
Westminster.  At  all  events,  I  have  said  quite 
enough  to  impress  on  the  mind  of  American  readers 
the  fact,  that,  during  many  centuries,  Ireland  had  a 
distinct  and  separate  Parliament  of  her  own.  It  may 
be  asked,  Why  tell  us  all  this  ?  Is  it  not  written 
down  in  history?  Yes,  it  is  written  clown  in  history; 
but  we  do  not  all  of  us  read  and  remember  every 
thing  that  is  written  down  in  history,  especially  in 
the  history  of  Ireland.  Lest  my  American  readers 
should  think  I  am  unreasonably  disparaging  their 
degree  of  familiarity  with  all  the  facts  of  Irish  his- 
tory, let  me  tell  them  of  something  that  happened 
during  a  recent  debate  on  the  Irish  question  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  making  a 
speech ;  and  in  its  course  he  referred  to  something 
done  by  the  Irish  Parliament  before  1782,  —  the  year 
when  Poynings'  Act  was  repealed,  and  the  independ- 
ence of  the  Irish  Parliament  was  restored.  A  law 
official  of  the  present  government,  a  man  of  elo- 
quence and  capacity,  interrupted  Gladstone  with  the 
words,  "  There  was  no  Irish  Parliament  before  V782." 
Mr.  Gladstone  paused  like  one  thunder-striken. 
"  Does  the  honorable    and   learned  gentleman,"   he 


8  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

asked  in  amazement,  "  really  mean  to  deny  that 
there  was  an  Irish  Parliament  before  1782?"  — 
"  Certainly  I  do,"  was  the  confident  and  complacent 
answer.  I  believe  the  honorable  and  learned  gentle- 
man was  speaking  in  full  sincerity.  I  believe  he 
honestly  did  not  know  that  there  ever  was  an  Irish 
Parliament  before  the  days  of  Grattan  and  the  vol- 
unteers. Why  should  he  know  ?  How  should  he 
know  ?  Of  course  he  was  not  likely  to  read  Irish 
history  or  Irish  newspapers.  His  predecessor  in 
the  same  office,  actually,  under  a  liberal  government, 
once  declared  in  the  House  of  Commons,  with  look 
of  lordly  contempt,  that  he  never  read  Irish  news- 
papers. Why,  then,  should  the  solicitor -general 
under  a  Tory  government  be  expected  to  know  that 
there  was  an  Irish  Parliament  before  1782?  Were 
not  the  only  London  newspapers  which  he  was  likely 
to  read,  telling  him  and  the  world  every  day  that  the 
cry  for  an  Irish  Parliament  was  a  cry  for  an  auda- 
cious innovation  to  which  Englishmen  of  to-day  could 
never  listen,  and  of  which  Englishmen  in  the  happier 
yesterday  had  never  heard  ?  I  was  talking  lately  to 
an  English  lady,  wife  of  an  eminent  London  physi- 
cian, and  she  surprised  me  by  telling  me  that  she 
had  become  a  complete  convert  to  the  cause  of 
Home  Rule.     I  was  delighted  to  hear  it.     "  Do  you 


WHAT  IS  IRELAND'S  CAUSE?  9 

know,"  she  asked,  "why  I  have  become  converted?" 
I  did  not  know.  "  Because,"  she  told  me,  "  I  have 
read,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  the  history  of 
Ireland."  —  "I  wish,"  I  said,  "you  would  get  your 
husband  to  read  it  too."  She  laughed,  and  said, 
"  Oh,  I  have  tried  to  get  him,  but  he  won't  :  he  says 
it  might  convert  him,  and  in  his  position  it  would 
not  suit  him  to  be  a  Home  Ruler."  For  it  is  as  well 
to  tell  the  American  public  at  once,  that  a  man  who 
makes  his  living  in  any  way  out  of  the  aristocratic 
classes  in  England,  would  find  it  much  to  his  dis- 
advantage to  be  a  Home  Ruler  or  a  sympathizer  with 
the  Irish  national  cause.  As  long  as  he  can  say  he 
knows  nothing  about  it,  he  is  safe.  Thus  he  can 
reconcile  his  conscience  and  his  position.  The  man 
who  does  not  want  to  be  a  Home  Ruler  must  not 
read  Irish  history.  That  may  be  taken  as  an 
axiom. 

This  demand  for  Home  Rule,  then,  is  not  a  novelty. 
An  Irish  Parliament,  whatever  it  might  be,  would 
not  be  an  innovation.  I  suppose  I  may  take  it  that 
these  two  facts  at  least  are  beyond  dispute.  I  come, 
then,  to  another  consideration.  Is  there  any  thing 
unreasonable  in  asking  for  a  Home  Rule  system  for 
Ireland  ?  The  empire  of  Queen  Victoria  is  for  the 
most  part  an  agglomeration  of  home-ruled  communi- 


IO  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

ties.  The  Canadian  Dominion  and  Provinces,  the 
Australian  and  Australasian  colonies,  are  governed 
by  themselves.  The  South-African  colonies  have 
their  representative  systems  and  their  Home  Rule. 
These  colonies,  it  may  be  said,  are  too  far  away  from 
England  to  be  of  any  danger  to  her,  should  a  turbu- 
lent spirit  ever  arise.  I  should  say  that,  in  the  in- 
stance of  Canada  at  least,  the  distance  from  England 
greatly  increases  the  danger,  as  was  felt  pretty  keenly 
in  English  political  circles  during  the  progress  of 
the  dispute  about  the  "Alabama"  claims.  However, 
let  that  pass,  and  let  us  take  the  instance  of  com- 
munities that  are  not  far  away  from  England.  Take 
the  Channel  Islands,  within  gunshot  almost  of  the 
English  shore.  The  Channel  Islands  are  peopled  by 
a  French  population  ;  French  is  the  official  language 
of  the  legislatures,  of  the  courts  of  law,  of  the  royal 
court.  Yet  these  French  populations  are  allowed  to 
manage  their  own  affairs.  We  never  hear  any  thing 
about  them  in  Westminster ;  we  never  hear  any 
thing  about  them,  for  the  good  reason  that  they  are 
allowed  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  Take  the  little 
Isle  of  Man,  the  holiday  place  of  Manchester  and 
Liverpool  excursionists.  The  Isle  of  Man  has  not 
only  a  Home  Rule  system,  but  it  is  a  system 
absolutely  different   in   every  way  from   any  thing 


WHAT  IS  IRELAND'S   CAUSE?  II 

known  in  England  or  the  great  English  colonies. 
The  little  island  is  allowed  to  manage  its  affairs 
after  its  own  fashion,  in  accordance  with  its  own 
traditions.  We  never  hear  any  thing  about  the 
Isle  of  Man  in  the  Imperial  Parliament.  If,  then, 
there  are  so  many  Home  Rule  communities  already 
under  the  English  Crown,  what  reason  is  there  on 
the  face  of  things  why  one  other  Home  Rule  com- 
munity should  not  be  added  to  the  number?  In 
every  one  of  these  Home  Rule  communities,  Home 
Rule  has  either  kept  up,  or  created  for  the  first 
time,  prosperity,  peace,  and  content.  There  is  not 
one  single  example  of  Home  Rule  of  a  genuine 
kind  working  the  other  way.  But  the  claim  of 
Ireland  is  much  stronger  than  the  claim  of  Canada, 
for  instance.  When  Home  Rule  was  demanded 
for  Canada,  it  was  undoubtedly  an  innovation  and 
an  experiment.  It  might  have  been  asked  —  it 
was  very  often  asked  —  of  Canada  and  Canada's 
advocates,  "  Why  do  you  cry  out  for  this  new 
thing  ?  Why  do  you  call  upon  us  to  make  this 
rash  experiment  ? "  But  this  question  cannot  be 
asked  of  the  representatives  of  Ireland.  They  ask 
for  no  new  thing :  they  ask  that  the  old  condition 
of  things  shall  be  restored ;  they  ask  that  Ireland 
shall  have  its  own  again.     The  system  has  worked 


12  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

for  good,  and  nothing  but  good,  wherever  it  has 
been  tried.  But  in  other  places  it  was  undoubt- 
edly an  innovation ;  in  Ireland's  case  it  will  be 
merely  a  restoration. 

I  need  hardly  go  about  to  prove  elaborately  that 
the  Home  Rule  system  has  worked  well  in  the 
great  English  colonies  ;  but  I  may  say  something 
about  Canada.  What  was  the  condition  of  Canada  ? 
The  same  antagonisms  of  race  and  of  creed  were 
found  in  Canada  that  people  lament  and  bewail 
in  Ireland.  Canada,  like  Ireland,  was  governed 
virtually  from  Westminster.  The  governor-general's 
offices  were  for  Canada  what  Dublin  Castle  is  for 
Ireland.  What  was  the  consequence  ?  The  French 
Canadian  detested  the  English  and  the  Scotch 
Canadian ;  the  Catholic  hated  the  Protestant,  and 
the  Protestant  hated  the  Catholic.  All  were  agreed 
on  one  point,  and  one  point  only,  —  detestation 
of  the  centralized  system  of  government.  Lower 
Canada  went  into  rebellion  ;  Upper  Canada  went 
into  rebellion.  The  English  Government  struck  a 
rare  stroke  of  good  luck.  They  sent  out  as  com 
missioner,  to  restore  Canada  to  order,  a  statesman 
and  a  man  of  genius,  Lord  Durham.  Lord  Dur- 
ham's name  has  been  curiously  forgotten  in  our 
time.     His   work   survives    him,   however,   and   the 


WHAT  IS  IRELAND'S   CAUSE?  1 3 

prosperity  of  the  Dominion  of  Canada  is  his  mon- 
ument. I  can  hardly  forgive  the  people  of  Quebec 
for  having  changed  the  name  of  "Durham  Terrace" 
to  "Dufferin  Terrace."  Lord  Dufferin  is  a  man  of 
great  ability,  varied  accomplishments,  and  charm- 
ing manners,  and  he  did  a  great  deal  for  Quebec. 
I  dare  say  he  would  be  a  much  more  agreeable 
man  to  dine  with  than  the  hot-tempered  and  over- 
bearing Lord  Durham.  But  Lord  Durham  was  a 
man  of  genius,  and  the  Dominion  of  Canada  is 
the  trophy  of  his  genius.  Lord  Durham  saw  that 
there  was  but  one  remedy  for  the  ills  of  Canada, 
and  that  remedy  was  Home  Rule.  He  saw  that 
the  only  possible  way  of  governing  a  country  in 
which  there  are  different  races,  different  religions, 
different  habits,  and  different  traditions,  is  on  the 
principle  of  what  we  may  call,  for  lack  of  any  bet- 
ter expression,  the  federal  system  of  government. 
He  laid  the  foundation  of  that  system  in  the 
Canada  of  his  time,  and  his  scheme  provided  for 
the  expansion  of  the  system  into  the  Canada  of 
our  time.  He  found  Canada  distracted  by  intes- 
tine dissensions  and  hatreds,  unprosperous,  retro- 
grading, in  bitter  enmity  with  the  parent  country, 
a  source  of  weakness,  and  even  of  shame,  to  Eng- 
land.     What    is    Canada    now  ?      A    peaceful    and 


14  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

prosperous  country,  growing  and  expanding  in  re- 
sources and  in  strength  every  day,  a  country  which 
never  gives  England  a  moment's  trouble.  If  Eng- 
land could  only,  at  any  time  within  the  last  ten 
or  a  dozen  years,  have  sent  us  in  Ireland  a  Lord 
Durham !  If  only  she  had  the  Lord  Durham  to 
send !  Lord  Caernarvon  might  have  been  a  Lord 
Durham  —  only  he  was  not.  "  What's  impossible 
can't  be,  and  very  seldom  comes  to  pass."  I  fully 
believe  that  Lord  Caernarvon  had  all  the  good-will, 
all  the  warm  wish,  to  be  the  Lord  Durham  of 
Ireland.  But  even  if  he  wanted  nothing  else,  he 
wanted  the  imperial,  the  imperious  mind  of  Lord 
Durham. 

It  is  a  curious  study  now  to  read  the  debates 
in  Parliament  on  the  proposals  of  Lord  Durham. 
The  objections  made  by  opponents  of  the  schemes 
might  be  quoted  word  for  word  as  speeches  made 
by  Conservatives  or  secessionist-Liberals  against 
Mr.  Gladstone's  Home  Rule  scheme.  If  we  adopt 
Lord  Durham's  plan,  we  shall  leave  the  loyal 
minority  at  the  mercy  of  the  disloyal  majority; 
we  shall  leave  our  Protestant  co-religionists  at  the 
mercy  of  Catholic  bigotry.  It  will  mean,  it  is 
meant  to  mean,  the  separation  of  Canada  from 
England.      The   really   respectable   and    intelligent 


WHAT  IS  IRELAND'S   CAUSE  1  1 5 

people  of  Canada  are  all  against  it ;  only  the  sedi- 
tion-mongers are  in  favor  of  it.  It  is  not  really 
a  Canadian  movement  at  all ;  it  is  a  movement 
fostered  and  kept  up  altogether  by  supplies  of 
money  from  the  United  States.  The  enemies  of 
England  are  doing  it  all,  and  Lord  Durham  is  only 
the  tool  of  the  enemies  of  England.  Lord  Dur- 
ham's official  title  was  Lord  High  Commissioner. 
The  "Times"  of  that  day  —  very  like  in  fairness 
and  intelligence  to  the  "Times"  of  this  day  — 
used  to  make  it  a  practice  to  call  him  "the  Lord 
High  Seditioner."  Glancing  at  some  of  those  old 
leading  articles,  I  thought  lately  how  wonderfully 
like  they  are  to  the  attacks  which  the  "Times" 
makes  every  day  on  Mr.  Gladstone.  I  almost  felt 
like  Vivian  Grey,  when,  as  he  is  talking  with  the 
mediatized  Prince  of  Turriparva  over  the  prince's 
schemes  and  plans  and  ambitions,  his  mind  goes 
back  to  the  far-distant  days  when  he  talked  over 
the  same  kind  of  thing,  under  different  conditions, 
with  the  English  Marquis  of  Carabas,  and  found 
it  all  silly  and  weary,  and  provocative  of  sleep ; 
and  he  thinks  within  himself,  that,  after  all,  time 
is  nothing,  and  that,  from  the  Marquis  of  Carabas 
to  the  Prince  of  Turriparva,  there  is  not  the  tran- 
sit of  a  moment.     From  the  "  Times  "  denouncing 


1 6  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

Lord  Durham,  to  the  "  Times "  denouncing  Mr. 
Gladstone,  there  is  no  distance  to  be  traversed ;  it 
is  the  same  thing.  A  Rip  Van  Winkle  who  had 
fallen  asleep  while  the  "  Times  "  was  droning  over 
the  pacificator  of  Canada,  might  well  believe  it 
was  just  the  same  old  drone  still  going  on,  if  he 
happened  to  wake  up  at  a  right  moment,  and  hear 
the  "Times"  droning  over  Mr.  Gladstone.  Little 
Lord  Durham  recks  now  what  the  "  Times "  said 
then  ;  little  need  has  Mr.  Gladstone  to  reck,  even 
now,  what  the  "Times"  says  of  him. 


HOW  IRELAND   LOST  HER   PARLIAMENT.         \J 


CHAPTER    II. 
HOW    IRELAND    LOST    HER    PARLIAMENT. 

HOW,  then,  did  Ireland  come  to  lose  her  national 
Parliament  ?  What  was  the  crime,  or  series 
of  crimes,  which  that  Parliament  committed,  and 
which  rendered  necessary  its  sudden  extinction  ? 
The  story  is  an  old  one  now.  It  has  often  been 
told,  yet  it  will  bear  telling  once  again.  Perhaps 
it  cannot  be  told  too  often  for  the  purpose  of 
impressing  on  the  minds  of  stranger  readers  the 
full  force  and  meaning  of  the  claim  which  Ireland 
has  upon  England  for  the  restoration  of  her  national 
Parliament.  The  British  Philistine  idea  is  just 
this :  "  Ireland  had  a  Parliament  for  a  few,  a  very 
few,  years ;  and  the  Irish  Parliament  managed 
things  so  badly, — getting  up  frightful  rebellions 
among  its  other  fantasies  of  wickedness,  —  that, 
for  the  sake  of  Ireland  itself,  the  wicked  Irish 
Parliament  had  to  be  abolished,  and  Ireland  brought 
under   the    saving    shelter   of   the    imperial   Parlia- 


1 8  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

ment  at  Westminster."  Let  me,  in  a  few  words, 
now  tell  the  story  as  authentic  history  tells  it. 
We  shall  see  then  whether  it  was  through  any 
fault  of  her  own,  that  Ireland  lost  her  national 
Parliament.  We  shall  see  whether  the  cause  of 
her  losing  it  does  not  strengthen  immensely  her 
claim  for  its  restoration.  We  shall  see  whether 
the  Irish  Parliament,  with  all  its  faults,  was  not 
fighting  the  battle  of  religious  liberty,  the  battle  of 
civilization,  against  the  English  sovereign  and  his 
minister.  The  Irish  Parliament  was  extinguished 
because  its  leaders  were  men  more  enlightened 
than  George  the  Third ;  because  they,  Protestant 
as  well  as  he,  stood  up  for  that  cause  of  Catholic 
emancipation  which  he  was  determined  to  crush. 

The  Irish  Parliament,  as  I  have  said,  was  not  an 
independent  Parliament  in  our  modern  sense  of  the 
word.  It  was  not,  even  after  the  repeal  of  Poynings' 
Act,  independent  in  that  modern  sense.  Neither 
was  it  representative,  according  to  our  ideas  of  rep- 
resentation. It  made  laws  for  a  country,  five-sixths 
of  whose  population  then,  as  now,  belonged  to  the 
Roman-Catholic  Church.  But  a  Catholic  could  not 
be  a  member  of  the  Irish  Parliament.  More  than 
that,  a  Catholic  could  not  give  a  vote  for  the  election 
of  a  member  of  the   Irish   Parliament.      The   Irish 


HO W  IRELAND   LOST  HER   PARLIAMENT.         1 9 

Parliament,  therefore,  could  no  more  be  said  to  repre- 
sent the  Irish  people  than  a  South-Carolina  Legisla- 
ture in  the  days  before  the  civil  war  could  be  said  to 
represent  the  slave  population  of  the  State.  Yet  so 
national  in  spirit  were  the  leaders  and  the  best  men 
of  that  Irish  Parliament,  that,  although  responsible  to 
no  single  Catholic  voter,  — for  there  was  no  Catholic 
voter, — the  first  use  these  Protestant  gentlemen 
made  of  the  increased  independence  of  the  Parlia- 
ment was  to  endeavor  to  carry  legislative  measures 
for  the  emancipation  of  their  Catholic  fellow-sub- 
jects. The  leaders  of  the  movement  had  a  hard 
struggle  for  a  while.  The  Irish  Parliament  was 
made  up  for  the  most  part  of  landlords  and  lawyers, 
and  the  majority  represented  the  ascendancy  of  race 
and  of  creed.  Still  Grattan  and  his  friends  were 
able  to  accomplish  a  reform,  which  at  least  enabled 
Catholics  to  vote  for  the  election  of  members  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  This  was  not  enough  for 
Grattan.  He  and  his  friends  were  determined  that 
the  chains  of  the  Catholic  should  not  "  clank  o'er 
his  rags." 

In  the  mean  time  an  association  had  been  formed 
in  Ireland  which  afterwards  became  famous  in  Ire- 
land's history,  and  the  original  objects  of  which  have 
been  more   constantly  and    systematically  misrepre- 


20  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

sented  than  those  of  any  other  political  organization 
of  which  I  have  read.  I  am  speaking  of  the  Society 
of  United  Irishmen.  The  Society  of  United  Irish- 
men was  founded  in  1791  by  Theobald  Wolfe  Tone. 
Wolfe  Tone  was  a  Protestant  patriot,  a  man  of 
genius  and  indomitable  spirit  and  rich  mental 
resource.  He  founded  the  Society  of  United  Irish- 
men for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  Catholic  emanci- 
pation and  parliamentary  reform  in  Ireland.  Tone's 
great  grievance  was  that  there  was  no  national  gov- 
ernment in  Ireland ;  that  the  country  was  ruled  "  by 
Englishmen  and  the  servants  of  Englishmen,"  whose 
sole  object  was  to  advance  the  interests  of  England 
at  the  expense  of  those  of  Ireland.  The  Irish  Par- 
liament was  mainly  elected  by  a  number  of  pocket 
boroughs,  and  rotten  boroughs,  and  constituencies 
dependent  on  some  great  peer  or  other  territorial 
magnate.  Tone's  policy  was  to  unite  all  true  Irish- 
men against  this  system  ;  and  it  was  by  his  urgent 
advice  that  the  new  association  took  no  account  in 
its  title  of  any  thing  sectarian,  and  merely  styled 
itself  a  Society  of  United  Irishmen.  Tone  became 
secretary  of  a  Catholic  association,  for  the  purpose 
of  obtaining  relief  from  penal  disqualification  for 
the  Catholics.  He  had  worked  so  gallantly  and 
zealously  in  the  Catholic  cause,  that   the  Catholics 


HOW  IRELAND  LOST  HER   PARLIAMENT.        21 

were   only   too    glad    to    make   him,    a   Protestant, 
secretary  of  their  distinctive  association. 

The  Society  of  United  Irishmen  was  composed 
mainly  of  young  Protestants,  —  men,  for  the  most 
part,  of  talents,  education,  and  social  position. 
Men  like  Thomas  Addis  Emmet  and  Lord  Edward 
Fitzgerald  and  Hamilton  Rowan  belonged  to  it. 
Many  wealthy  merchants  and  bankers  belonged  to 
it.  We  know  all  about  it  now.  We  can  study  its 
proceedings  and  its  records,  its  resolutions,  its  ap- 
peals to  the  Sovereign,  its  petitions  to  Parliament. 
We  know  that  its  objects  were  peaceful,  loyal,  patri- 
otic, constitutional.  We  know  that  its  aim  was,  as 
set  out  in  its  own  pledge,  to  "  endeavor  to  promote 
a  brotherhood  of  affection  and  union  among  Irish- 
men of  every  religious  persuasion,"  with  the  object 
of  procuring  "a  full,  equal,  and  adequate  represen- 
tation of  all  the  people  of  Ireland  in  Parliament." 
For  this  full  and  equal  and  adequate  representation, 
the  first  thing  needful  was  the  abolition  of  religious 
disqualification  ;  the  next  thing,  a  comprehensive 
measure  of  parliamentary  reform.  Such  was  the 
object  of  the  Society  of  United  Irishmen  at  the 
beginning,  and  for  many  years  of  its  subsequent 
existence.  It  was  a  constitutional  association  alto- 
gether, —  peaceful  in  its  professions,  peaceful  in  its 


22  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

aims.  I  hasten  to  anticipate  a  possible  criticism 
by  at  once  admitting  that  there  were  writers  even 
then  who  denounced  the  United  Irishmen  as  men 
of  treasonable  purpose.  For  these  critics  argued, 
as  George  the  Third  argued :  "  You  must  be  dis- 
loyal to  the  Constitution  and  to  the  Sovereign,  if 
you  seek  to  have  the  Catholics  emancipated.  You 
must  contemplate  civil  war ;  because  you  must  know 
that  England  will  never  consent  to  grant  Catholic 
emancipation  unless  you  can  conquer  her  in  a  civil 
war.  Therefore,  no  matter  what  your  protestations 
of  loyalty,  you  must  be  disloyal.  If  you  were  to 
swear  yourself  black  in  the  face,  that  you  are  only 
for  measures  of  peace,  you  must,  all  the  same,  be 
conspiring  for  war."  We  hear  this  sort  of  argu- 
ment in  England  just  now,  a  good  deal ;  and  we 
can  appreciate  it.  Those  who  employed  it  at  that 
time  employed  it  not  only  against  Wolfe  Tone,  but 
against  Grattan  as  well.  "  Henry  Grattan  must 
know,"  they  said,  "  that  he  is  allying  himself  with 
men  whose  policy  will  conduct  them  to  civil  war, 
to  rebellion;  therefore  he  is  a  rebel."  Grattan 
never,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  was  a  member  of  the 
Society  of  United  Irishmen  ;  but  that  did  not  count 
for  much  with  his  opponents.  Gladstone  was  never 
a  member  of  the  National  League. 


HOW  IRELAND   LOST  ITER  PARLIAMENT.         23 

The  unquestionable  fact,  however,  —  unquestion- 
able by  any  one  who  knows  any  thing  of  the  history 
of  the  times,  —  is,  that  the  Society  of  United  Irish- 
men was  in  the  beginning,  and  through  all  its 
existence  down  to  a  certain  event  of  which  I  shall 
presently  tell,  a  peaceful,  constitutional  association, 
laboring  for  noble  objects  by  pacific  means.  In 
truth,  the  United  Irishmen  were  fully  convinced 
that  they  were  walking  the  straight  way  to  a  com- 
plete and  a  peaceful  success.  All  the  patriotism 
of  Ireland  was  with  them ;  the  best  and  loftiest 
intellect  of  England  was  with  them.  Their  cause 
was  making  illustrious  converts  every  day.  Grattan 
himself,  —  what  was  he  but  a  convert  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  Catholic  emancipation  ?  He  entered  public 
life  as  its  opponent,  he  soon  became  its  warmest 
and  most  powerful  friend.  In  January,  1795,  the 
hopes  of  the  United  Irishmen  seemed  confirmed  to 
the  full  ;  their  success  seemed  to  be  proclaimed 
by  the  appointment  of  Lord  Fitzwilliam  as  viceroy 
of  Ireland. 

I  am  anxious  that  my  American  readers  should 
fix  their  eyes  closely  on  this  event  in  Irish  history. 
The  viceroyalty  of  Lord  Fitzwilliam  is  a  turning- 
point.  Fitzwilliam  was  a  man  of  generous,  benefi- 
cent, and    noble   life.     He    had  been  a  friend   and 


24  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

follower  of  Fox ;  but  he  had  quitted  Fox,  as  Burke 
did,  in  the  controversy  about  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. He  retained,  however,  his  devotion  to  those 
principles  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  which  Fox 
had  always  proclaimed.  He  came  over  to  Ireland, 
as  he  understood,  with  full  powers  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  the  country,  both  as  to  Catholic  eman- 
cipation, and  the  purifying  of  the  administrative 
and  the  representative  system.  He  threw  himself 
heart  and  soul  into  Grattan's  plans.  He  assisted 
Grattan  with  his  own  hand  to  draw  up  some  of 
the  measures  of  religious  and  political  reform  ;  and 
he  gave  it  to  be  publicly  understood  that  he  in- 
tended nothing  short  of  a  complete  emancipation 
of  the  Catholics  of  Ireland.  What  was  the  conse- 
quence ?  King  George  took  fright.  King  George's 
conscience  was  awakened.  King  George's  Protes- 
tant zeal  began  once  again  to  eat  him  up.  Lord 
Fitzwilliam  was  recalled.  He  was  summoned  back 
to  England  under  conditions  of  humiliation  and 
disgrace.  He  was  hurried  back  like  some  criminal 
about  to  be  brought  before  some  bar  of  public 
justice.  For  what?  Because  he  had  promised  to 
assist  the  Irish  National  Parliament  in  obtaining 
political  emancipation  for  five-sixths  of  the  popula- 
tion of  Ireland. 


HOW  IRELAND   LOST  HER  PARLIAMENT.        2$ 

The  effect  upon  the  Irish  people  was  like  the 
effect  upon  the  Northern  States  of  the  Union  when 
the  flag  at  Fort  Sumter  was  fired  on.  The  Irish 
people  saw  that  under  such  a  king  there  was  no  hope 
of  any  peaceful  settlement  of  the  national  demand. 
On  the  very  threshold  of  the  temple  of  hope  they 
had  been  flung  back  into  the  cavern  of  despair. 
What  was  the  effect  more  especially  on  the  leaders 
of  the  Society  of  United  Irishmen  ?  These  lead- 
ers were  men  of  high  spirit,  brave  men.  Most  of 
them  were  at  that  generous  time  of  life  when  the 
loss  of  mere  existence  seems  nothing,  if  compared 
with  the  surrender  of  a  great  principle  and  the 
tame  sacrifice  of  a  great  cause.  Despairing  of  a 
peaceful  settlement  of  the  national  demands,  they 
did  what  all  true  hearts  must  feel  that  they  had  a 
right  to  do:  they  flung  themselves  and  the  country 
into  rebellion  against  the  government  of  King 
George.  I  need  hardly  remind  my  American 
readers,  that  this  was  that  same  King  George 
whose  perversity  and  obstinacy  compelled  their  fore- 
fathers to  fly  to  arms  against  him. 

Let  us  mark  once  more  the  difference  between 
success  and  failure.  The  American  rebels  succeeded, 
and  ceased  to  be  rebels.  Even  contemporary  history 
and  public  opinion  justified  their  uprising,  and  glori- 


26  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

fied  their  leaders.  Our  forefathers  failed  ;  and  down 
to  this  very  day,  there  has  hardly  been  an  English 
historian  of  mark  who  has  done  any  thing  like 
justice  to  the  motives  of  the  uprising  or  of  the 
men  who  took  part  in  it,  or  to  the  many  chances  it 
had  of  success.  Had  this,  that,  and  the  other  thing 
happened,  or  happened  otherwise,  had  the  winds  not 
blown  this  way,  had  that  man  not  died  at  the  wrong 
time, — the  Irish  insurrection  might  have  been  a 
success.  As  it  is,  English  historians,  when  they 
have  condescended  to  notice  the  leaders  of  the 
Irish  insurrection  at  all,  have  treated  them  usually 
as  fools  or  as  miscreants.  I  know  of  hardly  any 
thing  in  historical  literature  so  utterly  perverse  as 
Mr.  Froude's  picture  of  Wolfe  Tone.  The  whole 
description  is  simply  ignoble,  a  scandal  and  a  shame 
to  its  author.  Yet  Mr.  Froude  himself  told  me  once, 
in  private  conversation,  that  he  rather  admired  Wolfe 
Tone. 

A  deluge  of  blood  swept  over  the  country,  and 
then  the  rebellion  was  put  down.  Sir  Ralph  Aber- 
cromby,  the  humane,  high-minded  soldier,  who  once 
said  that  his  victories  made  him  melancholy,  was  for 
a  time  commander-in-chief  of  the  English  forces  in 
Ireland,  and  has  left  it  on  record,  that  crimes  of  blood- 
shed and  savagery  were  committed  by  the  soldiers 


HOW  IRELAND   LOST  HER  PARLIAMENT.        27 

under  his  command,  which  he  was  utterly  powerless 
to  prevent.  "  Every  crime,  every  cruelty,  that  could 
be  committed  by  Cossacks  or  Calmucs,  has  been  com- 
mitted here."  Abercromby  soon  left  the  work  of 
repression  to  other  and  less  humane  hands.  The 
rebellion  was  over ;  and  not  one  of  the  gallant  young 
Protestant  gentlemen  who  had  taken  part  in  it  ever 
again  appeared  at  an  Irish  meeting  or  in  an  Irish 
council-room  to  give  his  countrymen  the  benefit  of 
his  advice.  The  battle-field  had  dealt  with  some ; 
the  scaffold  had  disposed  of  others ;  mysterious 
midnight  deaths  in  prison-cells,  seeming  very  like 
convenient  assassinations  to  avoid  the  trouble  of 
public  trial,  had  disposed  of  others  yet ;  and  those 
who  survived  had  fled  across  the  seas  to  find  a  home 
in  foreign  lands.  There  is  to  this  day  a  monument 
conspicuous  on  Broadway,  in  the  city  of  New  York, 
which  testifies  to  the  manner  in  which  the  citizens 
of  that  great  community  appreciated  the  public  ser- 
vices of  Thomas  Addis  Emmet,  one  of  the  refugees 
of  Ninety-eight.  Who  fears'  to  speak  of  Ninety- 
eight  ?  Not  surely  any  of  the  descendants  of  the 
men  who  flung  their  souls  into  that  gallant  cause, 
and  gave  to  it  their  generous  blood.  Not  surely 
any  of  the  descendants  of  those  Englishmen  whose 
wise  and  noble  policy  would  have  prevented  Ninety- 


28  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

eight,  by  conceding  to  justice  and  right  those  national 
claims  which  King  George  and  his  ministers  rejected 
with  scorn. 

Ireland  was  now,  once  again,  as  a  corpse  on  the 
dissecting-table,  —  to  use  an  expression  that  more 
lately  became  famous.  The  king  and  his  minister 
could  do  with  her,  as  they  well  knew,  pretty  well 
what  they  pleased.  The  idea  had  for  some  time 
been  afloat  in  ministerial  circles  in  England,  and 
Ireland  too,  that  the  only  way  of  making  Ireland 
manageable  would  be  by  the  destruction  of  her 
separate  Parliament,  and  by  absorbing  her  repre- 
sentation into  the  English  assemblies  at  Westmin- 
ster. King  George  would  seem  to  have  made  up 
his  mind  to  this,  from  the  moment  when  it  became 
evident  that  the  Irish  Parliament  would  end  by 
accepting  the  principle  of  Cathclic  emancipation. 
The  outbreak  of  the  rebellion  gave,  unfortunately, 
an  opportunity  to  the  King  and  his  minister  to  carry 
out  the  scheme  of  absorption,  —  "the  union  of  the 
shark  and  his  prey,"  as  Byron  called  it.  Pitt  deter- 
mined at  once  to  bring  up  the  scheme  on  which 
the  King  had  set  his  heart.  It  was  resolved  that 
the  Irish  Parliament  must  be  extinguished.  A  new 
viceroy  was  sent  over  especially  for  this  purpose. 
Lord    Camden    had    succeeded    Lord    Fitzwilliam. 


HOW  IRELAND   LOST  HER   PARLIAMENT.         29 

Lord  Camden  was  now  succeeded  by  a  soldier ; 
but  a  soldier  whose  name  is  not  associated,  at  least 
on  the  American  side  of  the  Atlantic,  with  any 
very  splendid  military  achievement.  The  new  vice- 
roy of  Ireland  was  that  Lord  Cornwallis  whose 
name  will  be  remembered  in  American  history, 
chiefly  in  connection  with  a  certain  famous  capitu- 
lation at  Yorktown.  It  was  doubtless  the  idea  of 
the  good  King  George,  that,  although  Lord  Corn- 
wallis might  not  have  proved  quite  the  sort  of  man 
to  deal  with  George  Washington  and  his  followers, 
he  was  good  enough  to  manage  the  population  of 
Ireland,  exhausted  as  Ireland  was  after  her  fierce 
and  unsuccessful  struggle.  Lord  Cornwallis  was 
sent  over  with  a  commission  to  extinguish  the 
National  Parliament  of  Ireland,  by  whatever  process, 
and  at  whatever  cost. 

By  whatever  process  ?  Well,  to  be  sure,  the 
words  must  not  be  taken  too  literally.  Even  in 
those  days,  even  George  the  Third  could  not  simply 
abolish  the  Irish  Parliament,  and  bid  his  will  avouch 
it.  The  King  had  to  put  on  some  show  of  respect 
for  constitutional  and  legal  right.  The  thing  to 
be  done  was  to  get  the  Irish  Parliament  to  abolish 
itself ;  the  problem  for  Lord  Cornwallis  was,  in  fact, 
how  to  persuade  or  prevail  upon  the  Irish  House  of 


30  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

Commons,  to  vote  away  the  legislative  independence 
of  the  country.  There  was  an  Irish  House  of 
Lords,  of  course,  but  the  Irish  House  of  Lords  was 
—  very  much  like  other  Houses  of  Lords.  No  one 
expected,  from  the  majority  in  the  Irish  House  of 
Lords,  any  very  heroic  resistance  to  the  will  of  the 
King,  or  patriotic  deference  to  the  will  of  the  people. 
Therefore,  the  problem  was,  how  to  get  at  the 
House  of  Commons ;  how  to  get  over  the  House 
of  Commons ;  how,  as  we  should  say  in  modern 
English  slang,  to  "  nobble  "  the  House  of  Commons. 
Lord  Cornwallis  went  to  work  to  nobble  the  House 
of  Commons.  He  had  three  agencies  at  his  com- 
mand,—  terrorism,  fraud,  and  bribery.  He  made 
ample  use  of  all  his  powers.  He  threatened,  he 
deceived,  he  bribed  and  corrupted.  Ample  funds 
were  placed  at  his  disposal.  He  spent  millions  of 
pounds  sterling  in  buying  up  some  of  the  pocket 
boroughs  from  the  peers  and  other  territorial  mag- 
nates who  owned  them,  and  who  counted  on  their 
right  to  sell  them  just  as  they  did  on  their  right 
to  sell  their  cattle  and  their  sheep.  The  viceroy 
filled  all  the  vacated  places  with  creatures  of  his 
own.  It  was  a  familiar  practice  with  him,  when  he 
got  hold  of  a  constituency  in  this  way,  to  send  for 
election   the   commandant   of   the   nearest   English 


HOW  IRELAND  LOST  HER  PARLIAMENT.         3 1 

garrison,  —  some  garrison  just  employed  in  putting 
down  the  rebellion,  —  and  have  this  English  soldier 
returned  for  the  Irish  House  of  Commons,  and  com- 
missioned to  vote  away  Ireland's  national  life. 

The  practical  working  of  the  schemes  to  get  the 
Act  of  Union  passed  was  in  the  hands  of  Lord 
Castlereagh,  the  Irish  secretary,  the  man  whom 
Byron  spoke  of  as  "  a  wretch  never  named  but  with 
curses  and  jeers."  Cornwallis,  Castlereagh,  and 
Clare,  —  Lord  Clare,  the  Irish  lord  chancellor,  — 
were  the  triumvirate  intrusted  with  the  odious  task. 
Let  us  do  Lord  Cornwallis  the  justice  to  admit  that 
the  task  to  him  was  odious.  He  was  a  soldier  of 
the  old-fashioned  order,  who  would  carry  out  every 
instruction  given  by  his  master,  no  matter  how  base 
and  detestable  it  might  be.  But  he  had  enough  of 
the  spirit  of  a  soldier,  and  enough  of  the  heart  of  a 
man,  to  loathe  the  task  to  which  he  was  now  set. 
His  own  letters  contain  reiterated  descriptions  of 
the  work  he  had  to  do,  and  of  the  disgust  with 
which  it  inspired  him.  He  tells  again  and  again  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  wretched  castle  gang  and 
their  associates  were  continually  crying  out  for  more 
and  more  severity  in  Ireland  ;  more  imprisonments, 
more  torture,  more  blood.  He  gives  examples  of 
the  sort  of  conversation  which  used  to  go  on  at  his 


32  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

own  dinner-table,  among  the  creatures  whom  he  was 
compelled  to  court  and  to  entertain.  He  declares 
that  he  could  go  back  to  England  with  a  conscience 
comparatively  light,  if  he  were  only  allowed  "  to  kick 
those  whom  my  public  duties  oblige  me  to  court." 

So  far  as  one  may  judge,  Lord  Castlereagh  and 
Lord  Clare  had  no  such  qualms  of  Conscience.  They 
appear  to  have  found  the  work  congenial,  and  gone 
into  it  heart  and  soul.  Lord  Castlereagh  made  a 
public  announcement  that  every  nobleman  who  re- 
turned members  to  Parliament  should  be  paid  in 
cash  fifteen  thousand  pounds  for  every  member  so 
returned,  provided  of  course  that  the  member  voted 
the  right  way  ;  next,  that  every  member  who  had 
bought  his  own  seat  should  be  paid  back  the  money 
he  had  given  for  it ;  and,  thirdly,  that  all  members 
of  Parliament,  and  others  who  were  losers  by  the 
union,  should  be  compensated  for  their  loss,  and 
that  a  sum  of  one  million  and  a  half  sterling  should 
be  voted  for  this  latter  purpose.  An  absurd  attempt, 
founded,  I  suppose,  on  some  imperfect  knowledge 
of  this  latter  transaction,  has  lately  been  made  in 
England,  to  persuade  the  public  that  Castlereagh's 
alleged  bribery  was  not  bribery  at  all,  but  only 
compensation  for  injured  interests.  The  contention 
would  be  absurd  in  any  case,  for  much  of  the  money 


HOW  IRELAND   LOST  HER   PARLIAMENT.         33 

given  away  as  compensation  was  really  only  the 
reward  of  corruption ;  but,  besides  that,  the  so- 
called  compensation  money  represents  only  a  small 
part  of  the  money  spent  in  carrying  the  Act  of 
Union,  and  by  far  the  larger  part  of  this  money  was 
spent  merely  in  the  buying-up  of  votes.  About  five 
millions  sterling  were  spent  in  all.  Much  of  the 
bribery,  too,  consisted  in  the  giving-away  of  offices, 
and  the  creating  of  new  offices  to  give  away.  Bish- 
oprics, judgeships,  one  chief -justiceship,  rank  in  the 
navy,  rank  in  the  army,  —  all  these  were  bribes  freely 
given.  Forty  new  peerages  were  created.  If  a  man 
was  too  public-spirited  to  sell  his  country  for  a  mere 
payment  in  money,  and  preferred  a  peerage,  or  in- 
sisted on  a  peerage  as  well,  the  obliging  minister 
granted  his  demand  ;  and  to  this  day  the  phrase, 
"a  union  peer,"  is  used  in  Ireland  as  a  stigma,  as 
describing  a  man  whose  ancestor  sold  the  legislative 
independence  of  his  country  for  a  coronet  and  a  seat 
in  the  English  House  of  Lords. 

Of  course  there  were  men  at  that  time,  as  there 
are  at  every  great  crisis  in  the  history  of  every 
state,  —  men  who  were,  as  the  old  Scottish  saying 
puts  it,  "ower  good  for  banning,  and  ower  bad  for 
blessing ; "  men  who  had  not  the  moral  courage  to 
stand  up  in  the  face  of  day  for  their  country's  right, 


34  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

nor  tne  immoral  courage  to  stand  up  in  the  face  of 
day  against  it.  Such  men  commonly  sought  refuge 
in  retirement  and  obscurity ;  and  every  vacancy 
made  in  that  way  was,  of  course,  a  new  opportunity 
to  Castlereagh  to  buy  some  creature  of  his  own  into 
the  House  of  Commons.  Another  sort  of  policy 
also  was  pursued.  Any  man  who  held  any  manner 
of  public  office  or  benefice  under  the  Crown,  and 
who  refused  to  pledge  himself  to  Castlereagh's 
policy,  was  remorselessly  stripped  of  any  rank  or 
emolument  he  might  have  possessed.  Under  such 
conditions  the  wonder  is  that  the  minister  did  not 
succeed  in  getting  much  larger  majorities  for  his  pro- 
posals in  the  Irish  House  of  Commons.  The  plain 
fact  was,  that  any  one  who  chose  to  sell  his  vote  could 
get  any  price  he  liked  for  it.  Any  one  who  would 
not  sell  his  vote  had  to  brave  the  wrath  of  an  un- 
scrupulous minister,  and,  if  he  could  be  hurt  by  the 
Government,  he  most  assuredly  would  be  hurt.  The 
wonder  is  that  so  many  men  held  out ;  that  such  a 
large  proportion  of  the  Irish  House  of  Commons 
fought  against  the  union  to  the  last.  Grattan,  who 
had  gone  out  of  parliamentary  life,  made  hopeless 
by  the  outbreak  of  armed  rebellion,  came  back  to  the 
House  of  Commons  to  lead  the  fight  against  the  Act 
of    Union.     One  of  his  stanchest  comrades  in   the 


HOW  IRELAND  LOST  HER  PARLIAMENT.         35 

noble  work  of  resistance  is  a  man  whose  family  name 
comes  out  again  at  a  somewhat  later  period  in  Irish 
history,  —  Sir  John  Parnell.  The  Parnell  of  that  day 
fought  as  bravely  for  the  maintenance  of  Ireland's 
legislative  independence,  as  his  descendant,  the  Par- 
nell of  our  day,  is  fighting  for  its  restoration.  All 
that  was  best  in  English  public  life  and  English 
intelligence  was  opposed  to  the  policy  of  Pitt. 

Of  course  Pitt's  policy  prevailed.  The  Act  of 
Union  was  passed,  and  the  national  Parliament  of 
Ireland  was  extinguished  —  for  a  time.  The  first 
article  of  the  Act  of  Union  declares  that  "  the  king- 
doms of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  shall  upon  the  first 
day  of  January,  1801,  and  forever  after,  be  united 
into  one  kingdom."  Forever  after  !  We  are  already 
beginning  to  see  signs  enough  of  the  worthlessness 
of  a  statutory  "forever"  in  the  suppression  of  a 
nation's  right.  No  doubt,  the  hope  and  firm  belief 
of  Pitt  and  Castlereagh  was,  that  with  the  extinction 
of  the  Irish  national  Parliament,  would  be  extin- 
guished also  the  Irish  national  sentiment.  Plunket, 
then  still  a  patriot,  warned  the  ministry  that  as  well 
might  the  miserable  maniac  imagine  that  by  the 
suicidal  act  which  destroyed  his  perishable  body,  he 
could  extinguish  also  his  immortal  soul.  Time  has 
even  already  shown  that   Plunket  was  right.     The 


36  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

national  sentiment  is  not  extinguished.  It  burns 
now,  at  this  very  hour,  more  brightly  and  strongly 
than  it  did  even  in  the  days  when  Plunket  gave  out, 
all  in  vain,  his  eloquent  and  impassioned  warning  to 
a  stupid  king  and  an  unscrupulous  minister.  There 
is  one  way,  and  only  one,  by  which  the  opponents  of 
Ireland's  demand  can  get  rid  of  Irish  national  senti- 
ment ;  and  that  one  way  is  the  extinction  of  the 
Irish  race.  Until  the  last  man,  woman,  and  child 
of  Irish  birth,  or  Irish  descent,  be  got  rid  of  from  off 
the  earth,  — until  that  great  and  final  act  of  eviction 
can  be  accomplished,  the  sentiment  of  Irish  nation- 
ality will  be  a  trouble  to  Tory  statesmanship.  There 
does  not  at  present  seem  any  immediate  prospect  of 
this  complete  extinction  of  the  Irish  race.  The 
Irish  race  is  growing  everywhere  but  in  Ireland. 
The  time  is  not  far  distant  when  it  will  be  allowed  a 
chance  of  growing  in  Ireland  too. 

Something  was  needed  to  give  the  last  touch  of 
fraud  and  cruelty  to  the  policy  which  was  consum- 
mated in  the  union.  The  something  needed  was 
given,  and  it  was  this :  Numbers  of  the  weaker- 
kneed  among  the  Catholics  had  been  cajoled  into 
supporting,  or  at  all  events  not  opposing,  the  union, 
by  the  assurances  of  Castlereagh  and  his  colleagues, 
that,  the  moment  the  Act  was  passed,  the  imperial 


HOW  IRELAND   LOST  HER   PARLIAMENT.         37 

Parliament  would  emancipate  the  Catholics  in  Eng- 
land and  in  Ireland.  Lord  Cornwallis,  who  no  doubt 
believed  what  he  said,  had  gone  so  far  as  to  declare 
that  Catholic  emancipation  would  be  made  a  cabinet 
measure  in  the  first  days  of  the  imperial  Parliament. 
The  imperial  Parliament,  the  Union  Parliament,  had 
hardly  come  into  existence,  when  Pitt  and  his  col- 
leagues resigned  office.  This  step,  it  was  loudly  told 
to  the  public,  had  been  taken  because  the  King 
would  not  consent  to  Catholic  emancipation.  It  was 
taken,  in  reality,  because  a  peace  had  to  be  made 
with  France,  as  the  English  people  were  growing 
sick  of  the  long  war,  —  the  war  which,  as  it  after- 
wards turned  out,  was  then  only  beginning  ;  and 
Pitt,  who  did  not  believe  in  the  possibility  of  any 
abiding  peace,  and  did  not  want  peace,  would  not 
have  any  thing  to  do  with  the  arrangements.  He 
went  out  of  office ;  a  sham  peace  was  made,  which 
was  very  soon  after  unmade  ;  and  Pitt  came  back, 
master  of  the  situation.  He  made  no  stipulation  or 
even  suggestion  about  the  emancipation  of  the 
Catholics  ;  nor  did  he  ever  again  distress  the  con- 
science and  disturb  the  nerves  of  his  august  sovereign 
by  saying  one  single  word  to  him  on  the  subject  of 
the  Catholic  claims. 


38  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 


CHAPTER   III. 

IRELAND  WILL  NOT  HAVE  THE  UNION. 

THERE  are  three  points  which  it  is  specially 
important  to  impress  upon  the  understanding 
of  American  readers.  The  first  is,  that  until  quite 
lately  Ireland  always  had  a  Parliament  of  her  own ; 
the  second,  that  the  Irish  people  never  were  con- 
sulted about  the  abolition  of  the  Irish  Parliament; 
and  the  third,  that,  since  its  abolition,  the  Irish 
people  have  never  ceased  to  demand  its  restora- 
tion. The  legislative  union  of  England  and  Ire- 
land bears  date  the  1st  of  January,  1801  ;  the 
rebellion  of  Robert  Emmet  broke  out  in  1803; 
the  first  emphatic  protest  against  the  destruction 
of  Ireland's  legislative  independence,  O'Connell's 
great  movement  for  repeal  of  the  union,  began  in 
1843  ;  the  Young  Ireland  insurrection  took  place  in 
1848  ;  the  operations  of  the  Phoenix  Society  began 
in  1858;  the  Fenian  movement  followed  in  1866 
and  1867,  and  the  Fenian  movement  is  a  movement 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION        39 

still.  All  these  organizations,  however  they  may 
have  differed  in  methods  and  in  ultimate  purposes, 
had  the  one  thing  in  common,  that  they  were  pro- 
tests against  the  destruction  of  Ireland's  legislative 
independence.  Through  all  the  years,  from  the 
passing  of  the  Act  of  Union  to  the  present  hour, 
the  voice  of  Ireland  —  that  is,  of  the  vast  majority 
of  the  Irish  people  —  has  never  ceased  to  give  out 
that  protest.  Every  public  man  in  Ireland  has 
been  popular  exactly  in  proportion  to  the  earnest- 
ness and  the  strength  with  which  he  led  or  joined 
in  that  national  protest.  There  was  always,  at  the 
very  worst  of  times,  a  body  of  Irishmen  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  who  professed  to  represent 
that  national  protest.  Some  of  the  men  were,  in- 
deed, self-seekers  and  shams ;  but  the  fact  that 
a  self-seeker  thinks  it  to  his  advantage  to  sham  a 
national  sentiment,  is  only  another  testimony  to 
the  strength  and  the  reality  of  the  national  senti- 
ment. If  the  self-seekers  could  have  got  into  Par- 
liament without  shamming  national  sentiment,  they 
would  have  been  very  glad  to  do  so.  The  Irish 
people  were  often  mistaken  in  their  men.  They 
were  never  mistaken  in  their  principles.  One  re- 
calls with  a  melancholy  curiosity  the  course  of 
action   and    re-action    in    Ireland's    political    move- 


40  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

ments  for  some  generations.  Constitutional  agita- 
tion goes  on  until  it  reaches  a  certain  point,  and 
then  it  gives  evident  signs  of  faintness  and  of 
failure,  and  it  is  abandoned,  and  an  attempt  is 
made  at  some  sort  of  armed  organization.  That, 
too,  fails ;  and  then,  after  an  interval  of  depres- 
sion, a  new  constitutional  agitation  is  tried.  But 
the  purpose  of  the  nation  is  never  abandoned. 
That  one  hope  springs  eternal  in  the  breast  of 
Ireland.  I  can  remember  one  long  interval  during 
which  constitutional  agitation  —  especially  agita- 
tion in  the  House  of  Commons  —  was  looked  on 
with  almost  utter  hopelessness  and  distrust  by  the 
great  majority  of  the  Irish  people.  The  policy  of 
every  English  government  was  to  endeavor,  in  all 
possible  ways,  to  win  over  to  what  I  may  call 
the  imperial,  or  British,  side,  any  man  of  ability 
whom  the  Irish  people  sent  to  Parliament  to 
bear  witness  in  Ireland's  name.  Once  such  a 
man  could  be  induced  to  take  office,  to  become 
a  member  of  an  English  administration,  to  be- 
come the  servant  of  an  English  prime  minister, 
he  was  gone  from  the  national  ranks,  and  from 
the  cause  of  his  country.  This  was  the  fate  of 
Sheil,  O'Connell's  foremost  colleague  and  only  pos- 
sible rival  in  the  days  of  the  struggle  for  Catholic 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION.       4 1 

emancipation.  O'Connell  himself  lost  much  of  his 
popularity  because  at  a  later  day  he  tried  to  support 
Sheil,  when  Sheil,  having  accepted  office,  sought  to 
be  re-elected  to  the  House  of  Commons.  Not  even 
O'Connell's  influence  could  obtain  the  pardon  of  the 
Irish  people  for  the  man  who  had  thus  gone  over  to 
the  enemy.  The  Irish  people,  by  an  instinct  both 
natural  and  just,  always  assumed  that  the  Irish 
nationalist  who  took  office  in  an  English  adminis- 
tration had  gone  over  to  the  enemy.  Unfortunately 
there  were  always  deserters  of  the  kind.  How  could 
it  be  otherwise  ?  England  had  every  thing  to  offer 
which  could  tempt  ambition :  Ireland  could  offer 
nothing  but  her  confidence  and  her  love.  Once 
there  sprang  up  in  the  House  of  Commons  a  little 
band  or  gang  of  Irish  adventurers,  who,  after  having 
made  impassioned  professions  of  nationalism,  in 
order  to  get  into  Parliament,  began  when  they  had 
got  in  there  to  propagate  the  doctrine  that  the  best 
way  in  which  an  Irish  member  could  serve  his  coun- 
try was  by  taking  office  in  an  English  government. 
To  be  sure,  they  admitted,  if  one  man  alone  were  to 
take  office,  not  much  good  would  come  of  that.  He 
would  be  simply  absorbed  into  the  administration ; 
rolled  round  in  its  diurnal  course,  like  rocks  and  hills 
and  trees.     But  how  if  several  Irishmen  were  to  get 


42  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

office  at  once  ?  Could  they  not  then,  standing  loy- 
ally together,  bring  such  an  influence  to  bear  on 
their  English  colleagues  as  must  obtain  redress  for 
the  wrongs  of  their  country  ?  From  the  first,  these 
men  and  their  policy  and  their  professions  were  dis- 
trusted by  true  Irish  nationalists  in  and  out  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  they  had  their  day,  and 
they  were  clever  and  audacious  ;  and  they  did  suc- 
ceed in  palming  themselves  off  upon  an  English 
liberal  minister  as  representatives  of  the  national 
sentiment  of  Ireland.  An  English  minister  was  fool- 
ish enough  to  think  that  he  was  conciliating  Ireland 
when  he  gave  office  to  some  of  these  men.  The 
leader  of  the  band  was  made  a  lord  of  the  treasury ; 
another  was  appointed  a  commissioner  of  income-tax 
for  England ;  the  orator  of  the  party,  a  lawyer,  who 
knew  nothing  of  law,  but  had  an  eloquent  tongue 
and  an  unabashed  forehead,  became  solicitor-general 
for  Ireland.  The  principal  men  in  the  party,  includ- 
ing the  three  I  have  just  mentioned,  were  four ;  and 
they  were  banded  together  in  all  manner  of  financial 
as  well  as  political  enterprises.  They  were  great  at 
starting  banks,  floating  companies,  devising  and 
multiplying  financial  schemes  of  all  kinds.  Of 
course  all  this,  like  their  political  achievement,  was 
for  the  good  of  Ireland.      Things  went  on  delight- 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION        43 

fully  until  one  day  the  bubble  suddenly  burst.  What 
happened  then  ?  I  have  said  that  four  men  were 
allied  together  in  every  thing,  financial  as  well  as 
political.  What  happened  to  them  ?  It  is  an  inter- 
esting story,  and  it  can  be  told  in  a  few  sentences. 
The  first  of  the  four  turned  out  to  be  a  forger  and  a 
swindler,  and  escaped  from  justice  by  committing 
suicide  on  Hampstead  Heath  near  London.  The 
second,  his  brother,  turned  out  to  be  a  swindler ;  and 
he  fled  across  the  seas,  and  was  gone,  no  man  knew 
whither ;  and  the  House  of  Commons,  for  its  own 
credit's  sake,  went  through  the  ceremony  of  formally 
erasing  his  name  from  the  historic  roll  of  its  mem- 
bers. The  third,  who  had  been  made  commissioner 
of  income-tax,  finding  that  a  storm  was  coming, 
thoughtfully  put  the  available  proceeds  of  his  tax 
into  his  pocket,  and  prudently  retired  to  a  distant 
country  across  the  ocean,  and  disappeared  from  poli- 
tics. Still  there  was  the  fourth,  the  lawyer  of  the 
tongue  and  the  "cheek."  He  held  his  ground  ;  and 
the  question  arose,  what  was  the  English  Government 
to  do  with  him  ?  He  had  been  mixed  up  in  all  the 
financial  and  political  schemes  of  the  others,  and 
what  was  to  be  done  with  him  now  ?  The  English 
ministers  thought  the  matter  over,  and  perhaps  were 
not  certain  that  they  could  obtain  a  conviction  if 


44  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

they  were  to  put  him  into  the  dock  as  a  criminal. 
Perhaps  they  also  thought  it  would  be  inconvenient 
to  put  him  on  his  trial,  and  let  the  whole  story  of 
his  life  and  his  associates  be  told  to  an  astounded 
world.  So,  as  they  did  not  think  it  prudent  to  put 
him  into  the  dock  as  a  criminal,  they  put  him  on  the 
bench  of  justice  as  a  judge.  Yes,  this  is  the  simple 
historical  fact,  without  exaggeration  of  any  kind. 
They  made  this  man  a  judge  for  life  on  the  Irish 
bench ;  and  the  English  press  and  the  English  public 
of  that  day  could  not  understand  for  the  life  of  them 
why  the  Irish  people  should  be  dissatisfied  with  the 
administration  of  justice  in  Ireland. 

Naturally  this  catastrophe  gave  a  great  shock  to 
parliamentary  agitation  in  Ireland.  The  Irish  peo- 
ple became  sick  of  it,  disgusted  with  it.  There 
were  true  and  honest  Irishmen  still  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  who  stuck  to  their  posts,  and  kept 
the  national  flag  flying.  But  even  these  men  were 
disposed  rather  for  reform  in  the  land  system  than 
for  repeal  of  the  union.  Now,  we  all  know  what 
happens  in  any  country  where  there  is  a  sense  of 
national  wrong,  and  where  for  any  reason  the  people 
begin  to  lose  faith  in  open  and  constitutional  agita- 
tion. All  our  reading  of  history,  all  our  personal 
experience,  tells  us  what  happens  then.     Of  course 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION.        45 

the  era  of  secret  organization,  the  era  of  conspiracy, 
sets  in ;  so  it  was  in  Ireland.  The  collapse  of  par- 
liamentary agitation  was  followed  by  the  Fenian 
movement ;  the  effort  of  men  undoubtedly  brave, 
conscientious,  and  patriotic,  to  do  something  for 
their  country,  seeing  that  other  men  and  other  ways 
had  failed.  One  great  thing  the  Fenian  movement 
did  for  Ireland  :  it  roused  the  attention  of  an  illus- 
trious English  statesman  to  the  fact  that  there 
was  an  Irish  national  cause,  and  that  there  were 
Irishmen  who  knew  how  to  die  for  it.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone himself  has  told  the  world  of  this ;  has  told 
how  even  the  very  desperation  of  some  of  the  deeds 
done,  or  attempts  made,  by  the  Fenians,  brought 
the  reality  of  the  Irish  question  home  to  his  mind, 
and  set  him  thinking  what  he  could  do  to  solve 
the  terrible  problem. 

Meantime,  however,  the  movement  for  the  resto- 
ration of  the  Irish  national  Parliament  seemed  to 
have  come  to  a  stop ;  seemed,  indeed,  to  have  gone 
out  of  most  men's  minds  altogether.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone himself  was  still  under  the  impression  that 
Ireland  wanted  nothing  more  than  some  remedial 
measures,  which  could  be  accomplished  for  her  in 
the  imperial  Parliament.  For  a  long  time  there 
was  no  public  and  national    evidence   to   the   con- 


46  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

trary ;  although  every  Irish  party  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  every  party  which  kept  up  the  slightest 
profession  of  representing  the  Irish  people,  main- 
tained as  a  part  of  their  public  platform  the  right 
of  Ireland  to  the  restoration  of  her  national  Par- 
liament. Nothing,  however,  was  done  to  keep  any 
strong  agitation  going.  In  the  House  of  Commons, 
there  were  some  sincere  and  able  representatives 
of  the  national  cause,  who  kept  the  light  burning, 
who  at  all  events  did  not  allow  it  to  go  out  alto- 
gether. There  were  men  like  the  late  John  Francis 
Maguire,  a  powerful  debater,  a  thorough  patriot ; 
like  the  late  Frederick  Lucas,  —  an  Englishman  by 
the  way,  but  one  of  those  Englishmen  who  rise  up 
on  Ireland's  side  in  every  crisis  of  Irish  history. 
Frederick  Lucas  loved  Ireland,  and  understood  her  : 
she  will  not  forget  him.  There  was  Charles  Gavan 
Duffy ;  there  was  the  late  Sir  John  Gray,  father  of 
my  friend  Edward  Dwyer  Gray,  who  is  one  of  the 
leading  members  of  the  Irish  parliamentary  party. 
These  men  and  a  few  others  spoke  up  for  Ireland 
still ;  but  even  they  found  it  more  practical  for  the 
hour  to  turn  their  attention  to  the  system  of  land- 
tenure  and  landlordism  in  Ireland,  with  the  hope  of 
bringing  about  some  measure  of  reform  there.  They 
could  do  but  little  even  in  that.     Soon  Lucas  died  ; 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION.        47 

Duffy  went  to  Australia  to  begin  a  new  career  there, 
a  career  which  turned  out  in  every  way  successful 
and  honorable.  There  could  hardly  be  said  to  be 
any  longer  an  Irish  party  working  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  for  the  restoration  of  Ireland's  legislative 
independence.  It  was  not  that  the  desire  of  the 
nation  had  chilled  ;  it  was  only  because  the  nation 
had  lost  faith  in  the  imperial  Parliament.  Truly 
the  hour  was  sad  alike  for  the  Irish  nationalist 
who  had  no  hope  from  parliamentary  agitation,  and 
the  Irish  nationalist  who  could  not  believe  that 
an  armed  insurrection  would  have  any  chance  of 
success. 

To  this  latter  class  of  Irishmen,  I  myself  had 
come  to  belong.  I  did  not  believe  there  was  the 
remotest  ray  of  hope  for  any  Irish  insurrection, 
unless  it  were  made  at  a  time  when  England  was 
engaged  in  some  great  foreign  war.  Even  if  such 
an  event  were  to  come  about,  and  Ireland  were  to 
be  aided  by  the  arms  of  a  foreign  power,  I  thought 
it  extremely  probable,  that,  when  peace  came  to 
be  made,  the  independence  of  Ireland  would  not  be 
rigidly  insisted  on  as  a  condition  of  the  arrange- 
ment. And  then  I  had  other  ideas  and  hopes. 
I  am  only  saying  here  what  I  have  said  in  the 
House  of  Commons :  that  if  I  really  believed  there 


48  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

was  no  possibility  of  our  recovering  our  national 
Parliament  by  peaceful  agitation,  and  if  there 
seemed  any  ray  of  hope  for  an  armed  insurrection, 
I  should  think  true  nationalists  justified  in  trying 
the  appeal  to  arms,  even  although,  as  Theodore 
Parker  once  said  of  resistance  to  the  fugitive-slave 
law  cases,  in  so  doing  they  dug  their  own  graves 
and  the  graves  of  ten  thousand  men.  But  I  had 
still  a  strong  faith  in  the  power  of  constitutional 
agitation,  and  of  public  opinion.  I  had  also  a  strong 
faith  in  the  ultimate  sense  of  justice  of  the  English 
people,  of  the  great  working  democracy.  I  had  lived 
in  England  for  many  years ;  I  had  taken  part  in 
many  public  movements  there,  and  I  knew  some- 
thing of  the  English  democracy.  Some  time  or 
other,  I  knew,  these  English  democrats  —  I  am 
using  the  word,  of  course,  in  its  English  sense  — 
will  have  the  franchise,  and  enfranchised  they  will 
help  to  give  Ireland  back  her  national  Parliament. 

Suddenly,  no  one  could  quite  tell  how,  the  politi- 
cal atmosphere  of  Ireland  seemed  to  be  lightened 
by-  a  new  hope.  A  new  chapter  of  our  history 
was  to  all  appearance  opening.  Another  movement 
was  afoot  for  the  restoration  of  Ireland's  Parlia- 
ment. The  new  movement  sought  not  for  repeal, 
but  for  Home  Rule. 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION       49 

The  first  impulse  given  to  the  Home  Rule  move- 
ment was  given  by  some  of  the  Protestants  in 
Ireland.  They  were  not  for  the  most  part,  this 
time,  Protestants  of  the  national  and  patriotic  order, 
—  Protestants  like  Wolfe  Tone  and  Edward  Fitz- 
gerald and  Smith  O'Brien.  The  men,  or  at  least 
the  greater  number  of  them,  who  helped  to  set 
this  new  movement  going,  were  regular  members 
of  what  we  may  call  the  British  garrison  in  Ire- 
land, men  who  hated  every  truly  national  memory 
or  movement ;  but  they  were  under  the  influence 
of  a  wild  outburst  of  fury  against  Mr.  Gladstone's 
disestablishment  of  the  Irish  State  Church,  and 
they  were  ready  to  do  any  thing  to  show  their 
wrath.  "  Rather  than  submit  to  legislation  of  that 
kind,"  —  so  they  said,  —  "rather  than  see  religious 
equality,  and  we  don't  know  what  else,  introduced 
into  the  country,  let  us  go  for  Home  Rule  at  once. 
We  should  positively  have  a  better  chance  of  hold- 
ing our  own  with  our  own  people  than  with  Glad- 
stone and  his  English  Radicals."  In  this  spirit, 
such  Protestants  and  Tories  as  Col.  King  Harman 
joined  with  the  nationalists  in  forming  the  new 
movement  for  Home  Rule,  the  movement  which  for 
the  first  time  took  the  name  of  Home  Rule.  King 
Harman  and  his  friends  were  not  much  in  earnest, 


50  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

and  they  soon  found  out  that  religious  ascendancy 
would  have  just  as  little  chance  in  Ireland  self- 
governed  as  in  any  other  country  self-governed ; 
and  they  fell  away  from  the  cause,  and  became, 
some  of  them,  its  bitterest  enemies.  Irish  Home 
Rulers  were  looking  about  vaguely  for  a  leader, 
and  suddenly  the  leader  came.  Mr.  Isaac  Butt 
re-appeared  in  public  life. 

Mr.  Isaac  Butt  had  begun  his  career  as  a  professor 
in  Dublin  University,  as  a  Tory  and  a  resolute  oppo- 
nent of  O'Connell  and  O'Connell's  policy.  He  was 
an  advocate  by  profession,  and  he  so  rose  to  a  com- 
manding position  at  the  Irish  bar.  He  was  a  really 
great  advocate.  His  eloquence  was  at  once  impas- 
sioned and  subtile.  He  could  detect  a  flaw  in  a 
chain  of  evidence,  or  of  argument,  with  a  wonderful 
quickness.  He  could  wind  his  reasoning  in  and 
out  of  and  round  his  opponent's  case;  and  then  he 
could  give  his  passionate  eloquence  full  way,  until  it 
seemed  to  sweep  all  opposition  before  it.  I  suppose 
he  must  have  come  nearer  to  O'Connell,  as  orator 
and  advocate  and  lawyer  combined,  than  any  other 
man  of  recent  days  in  Ireland,  although  I  am  far 
indeed  from  suggesting  that  Butt  was  O'Connell's 
equal  either  as  orator  or  as  lawyer.  He  defended 
Smith  O'Brien  and  Meagher  when  they  were  tried 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION.        5  I 

for  high  treason  at  Clonmel  in  1848.  Later  on, 
he  defended  the  Phoenix  men.  Later  still,  he  de- 
fended the  Fenians.  Gradually,  by  thus  defending 
nationalists,  he  grew  himself  to  be  a  nationalist.  In 
the  mean  time,  however,  he  had  been  for  a  while  the 
spokesman  and  orator  of  the  English  protection 
party,  when  they  tried  to  get  up  a  re-actionary 
movement,  after  the  leading  Conservative  statesmen 
had  declared  that  they  would  make  no  further  at- 
tempt to  reverse  the  x  policy  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 
Butt  sat,  for  a  short  time,  in  the  House  of  Commons 
as  member  for  a  small  English  borough.  He  was 
still  a  Tory,  and,  as  a  Tory,  he  got  elected  for  an 
Irish  constituency ;  but  he  was  fast  coming  round  to 
the  national  creed. 

Therefore,  when  the  new  Home  Rule  movement 
started,  Mr.  Butt  was  the  manifest  and  the  only 
leader.  He  had  been  out  of  Parliament  for  some 
time ;  but  he  was  easily  persuaded  to  return  to  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  the  parliamentary  move- 
ment began.  Mr.  Butt  got  around  him  a  body  of 
nearly  sixty  Irish  members  pledged  to  Home  Rule. 
Some  years  later  Mr.  Gladstone  described  most  of 
these  men  in  a  phrase  of  unintentional  aptitude, 
when  he  spoke  of  them  as  "the  nominal  Home 
Rulers."     Nominal  Home  Rulers  they  were,  most  of 


52  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

them,  and  nothing  more.  At  the  time  it  was  not 
possible  for  men  to  get  in  for  a  popular  Irish  con- 
stituency without  professing  a  devotion  to  Home 
Rule  ;  therefore  a  great  many  men  professed  a  de- 
votion to  Home  Rule,  who  had  not  the  slightest  faith 
in  the  movement,  and  never  believed  the  Home 
Rule  question  would  give  any  trouble  to  anybody. 
Undoubtedly,  also,  many  of  Mr.  Butt's  followers, 
especially  among  the  younger  men  who  had  newly 
come  into  Parliament,  were  sincere  and  earnest  in 
their  political  and  patriotic  professions.  Some  of 
these  men  have  since  proved  their  sincerity  by  years 
of  devotion  to  the  national  cause,  under  conditions 
hard  enough  to  strain,  now  and  then,  the  most  un- 
swerving patriotism.  But  the  majority  of  the  party 
were,  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  words,  nominal 
Home  Rulers.  They  were  the  best  Mr.  Butt  could 
get,  however,  at  the  time.  The  franchise  in  Ireland 
was  so  restricted  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  popu- 
lation had  no  direct  part  whatever  in  the  election  of 
a  member  of  Parliament.  The  election  was,  to  a 
great  extent,  in  the  hands  of  the  landlord  party  and 
of  the  shopkeepers  in  the  towns,  who  often  were 
themselves  dependent  on  the  patronage  of  the  land- 
lords. The  tenant  farmers,  when  they  had  votes, 
were  always  stanch  and  stalwart  patriots  ;   but  the 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION        53 

strength  of  the  landlord  class,  and  of  those  who 
had  to  depend  on  the  landlord  class,  was  very  great, 
and  the  effect  was  shown  in  the  constitution  of  Mr. 
Butt's  party.  Mr.  Butt  did  the  best  he  could,  as  he 
saw  things ;  but  his  policy  was  barren,  could  be 
nothing  but  barren.  His  policy  was  to  bring  in, 
every  session,  a  series  of  bills  for  the  redress  of  the 
grievances  of  Ireland,  —  for  land-tenure  reform,  elec- 
toral reform,  municipal  reform,  and  so  forth ;  and 
to  have  a  motion  every  session, — that  is,  every 
year,  —  in  favor,  not  indeed  of  Home  Rule,  but  of 
the  appointment  of  a  parliamentary  committee  to 
inquire  into  the  nature  of  the  Home  Rule  claim. 
The  bills  were,  of  course,  rejected,  session  after  ses- 
sion, by  large  majorities.  The  Home  Rule  motion 
led  to  what  we  call  "  a  full-dress  debate,"  once  every 
session;  that  is,  once  every  year.  Mr.  Butt  made 
a  great  speech  ;  several  of  his  followers  made  elo- 
quent, argumentative,  and  what  ought  to  have  been 
convincing,  speeches  :  but  no  vote  was  won  over  to 
their  cause.  The  minister  of  the  day  delivered  a 
reply,  in  which  he  complimented  the  Home  Rule 
members  on  the  eloquence  and  ability  with  which 
they  had  pleaded  their  national  cause,  and  then  went 
on  to  show,  in  a  few  easy  sentences,  that  it  was 
utterly  out  of   the  question  for  them  to  expect   an 


54  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

English  government  to  treat  any  such  demand  seri- 
ously. The  minister  rarely  condescended  to  sober 
and  sustained  argument.  He  treated  the  whole 
business  as  a  sort  of  annual  ceremonial,  as  indeed 
it  was  to  a  great  extent ;  and  then  the  division 
was  taken,  and  the  Home  Rulers,  and  perhaps  half 
a  dozen  English  and  Scotch  sympathizers,  went  one 
way,  and  the  other  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons  went  the  other  way ;  and  of  course  the 
motion  for  an  inquiry  into,  the  merits  of  the  Home 
Rule  claim  was  beaten  by  an  utterly  overwhelming 
majority.  Then  the  Home  Rule  claim  was  allowed 
to  go  to  sleep  for  another  session ;  that  is,  for 
another  year.  It  made  hardly  any  impression  on 
the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  regarded  as  one 
of  the  annual  performances  which  have  to  be  got 
through,  and  which,  after  all,  only  waste  a  day  or 
so,  and  can  do  no  great  harm  to  anybody.  On  the 
public,  out  of  doors,  the  annual  debate  made  no 
impression  at  all.  The  great  majority  of  the  Eng- 
lish public  cared  nothing,  because  they  knew  noth- 
ing, about  Home  Rule.  They  did  not  know  that 
the  Irish  people  were  in  earnest  in  asking  for  Home 
Rule.  They  hardly  knew  that  there  was  an  avowed 
Home  Rule  party  in  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
annual  performance  might  have  gone  on  year  after 


IRELAND    WILL   NOT  HAVE    THE    UNION.        55 

year,  to  the  end  of  time,  without  the  Home  Rule 
claim  advancing  thereby  one  single  pace.  Happily 
for  the  peaceful  solution  of  the  Irish  question,  there 
were  men  in  Mr.  Butt's  party  who  soon  chafed 
against  his  hopeless  policy,  and  at  last  broke  utterly 
away  from  it,  and  started  a  policy  of  their  own. 
Mr.  Butt  endeavored  to  persuade  them  :  they  would 
not  be  persuaded.  He  endeavored  to  overbear  them  : 
they  would  not  be  overborne.  They  grew  stronger 
as  he  grew  weaker ;  and  before  long  his  policy  was 
thrust  altogether  aside,  and  a  few  daring  and  reso- 
lute men  had  entered  on  the  policy  of  obstruction. 


56  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

OBSTRUCTION. 

IT  was  not  Mr.  Parnell  who  began,  in  our  day, 
the  policy  of  Irish  obstruction.  Mr.  Parnell 
was  not  yet  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons 
when  Mr.  Biggar  made  his  famous  speech,  four 
hours  in  length,  and  of  which  hardly  a  word  was 
heard  by  the  few  who  were  in  the  House.  But  it 
was  Mr.  Parnell  who  first  saw  the  use  to  which 
obstruction,  systematic,  organized,  irrepressible  ob- 
struction, could  be  turned,  for  the  purpose  of  forcing 
the  claims  of  Ireland  on  the  attention  of  England. 
The  experiment  was  tried  somewhat  tentatively  at 
first.  Parnell  seized  some  question  in  regard  to  his 
view  of  which  he  could  fairly  expect  some  public 
sympathy,  and  he  obstructed  the  Conservative  gov- 
ernment in  their  work  if  they  refused  to  satisfy  his 
demand.  For  example,  England  owes  to  Parnell, 
more  than  to  any  other  man,  the  abolition  of  the 
abominable  system  of  flogging  in  the  army,  which 


OBSTR  UC  TION.  5  7 

English  governments  had  clung  to  after  all  other 
civilized  governments  had  abandoned  it.  There  was 
always  a  small  philanthropic  party  of  men  in  the 
House  of  Commons  who  opposed  the  system,  and 
made  endeavor  at  its  abolition  ;  but  they  only  did  so 
in  the  familiar  and  orthodox  way.  They  made  an 
annual  motion  in  favor  of  the  abolition  of  flogging, 
or  they  got  up  a  debate  during  the  progress  of  the 
army  estimates.  A  few  speeches  were  made.  The 
war  minister  of  the  day  replied  by  insisting  that  the 
English  army  could  not  possibly  be  kept  together 
unless  the  soldiers  were  well  flogged  ;  and  then  a 
division  was  taken,  and  the  philanthropists  were  left 
in  a  pitiful  minority,  and  nothing  more  was  heard 
of  the  matter  for  another  year.  Parnell  showed  the 
opponents  of  the  lash  a  better  way  of  approaching 
their  object.  He  had  himself  a  profound  detestation 
for  the  flogging  system,  and  he  set  to  work  to  make 
manifest  his  sentiments  by  obstructing  the  army 
estimates  with  motions  for  the  abolition  of  flogging, 
and  incessant  speeches  made  by  his  followers  in 
support  of  his  motions.  In  committee  of  the  whole 
House,  a  member  can  speak  as  often  as  he  pleases  ; 
and  Mr.  Parnell  and  his  followers  used  their  privi- 
lege remorselessly  in  denouncing  the  flogging  sys- 
tem.    The   Liberals  were  then   in  opposition.     Sir 


58  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

Charles  Dilke  and  Mr.  Chamberlain  supported  Mr. 
Parnell  and  his  tactics.  Other  Liberals,  too,  sup- 
ported him.  The  thing  began  to  look  dangerous  for 
the  Government.  Lord  Hartington  was  then  leader 
of  the  opposition.  It  was  during  the  temporary 
retirement  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  Lord  Hartington 
at  first  denounced  Mr.  Parnell  and  the  English  Radi- 
cals who  were  making  common  cause  with  him.  All 
the  worse  for  Lord  Hartington  !  for  English  Radi- 
cals everywhere  took  up  the  cry,  and  Lord  Harting- 
ton had  to  eat  his  words.  He  had  actually  to  take 
up  the  cause  himself.  He  had  to  bring  forward,  as 
leader  of  the  opposition,  a  motion  condemning  flog- 
ging in  the  army  and  navy ;  and  the  flogging  system 
was  doomed.  It  came  to  an  end  altogether  soon 
after.  Parnell  himself  learned  a  great  deal  from  the 
result  of  his  policy  on  the  army  regulation  struggle. 
Perhaps  it  was  then  it  first  became  quite  clear  to  his 
mind,  that  thus,  and  not  otherwise,  was  the  way  to 
be  opened  for  the  true  movement  to  Home  Rule. 
Certainly  from  that  time  he  was  a  recognized  power 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  From  that  time  Irish 
obstruction  was  a  definite  policy  with  a  definite 
purpose. 

Nothing,  however,  could  have  been  more  misun- 
derstood in  the  beginning,  and  for  many  years  of  its 


OBSTRUCTION.  59 

working,  than  that  policy  of  obstruction.  Let  it  be 
said,  to  start  with,  that  obstruction  was  no  new  de- 
vice, originating  in  the  purely  mischievous  brains  of 
the  Irish  national  party.  Obstruction  is  an  art  that 
has  always  been  practised  for  one  object  or  another 
by  politicians  and  parties  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
Sir  Robert  Peel,  the  great  Sir  Robert,  practised 
a  policy  of  systematic  obstruction  to  resist  Lord 
Grey's  Reform  Bill  in  1831  and  1832.  This  obstruc- 
tion was  conducted  by  means  of  a  regularly  ap- 
pointed committee,  and  it  used  to  occupy  whole 
nights  in  the  purely  and  nakedly  obstructive  work 
of  proposing  and  supporting  alternate  motions 
"that  this  debate  be  now  adjourned,"  and  "that 
this  House  do  now  adjourn."  Mr.  Gladstone  led 
a  policy  of  pure  obstruction  for  the  sake  of  re- 
sisting the  passage  of  the  Divorce  Bill,  a  measure 
to  which  he  had  the  strongest  conscientious  objec- 
tion. Mr.  John  Francis  Maguire,  of  whom  I  have 
already  spoken,  and  whose  integrity  and  honor  were 
acknowledged  in  his  lifetime  and  after  his  death  by 
men  of  all  parties,  formulated  deliberately  a  policy 
of  obstruction, — he  called  it  obstruction, — as  the 
only  way  by  which  any  Irish  party  could  obtain  a 
hearing  for  Irish  grievances  within  the  walls  of  the 
House  of  Commons.     Mr.  Maguire  again  and  again 


60  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

advocated  and  urged  such  a  policy  ;  but  it  was  not 
taken  up  by  the  Irish  members  of  that  time,  and 
his  wise  idea  was  never  allowed  to  test  itself  in 
action.  Since  that  day  my  old  and  esteemed  friend 
Sir  John  Pope  Hennessy,  now  governor  of  the 
Mauritius,  then  member  for  an  Irish  county,  made 
himself  famous  as  an  obstructionist.  He  was  a  fol- 
lower and  an  intense  admirer  of  Mr.  Disraeli ;  and 
it  was  in  Mr.  Disraeli's  interests,  and  often  at  Mr. 
Disraeli's  suggestion,  that  he  carried  out  his  bold  and 
skilful  plans  for  the  obstruction  and  delay  of  min- 
isterial measures  when  Mr.  Disraeli  was  leading  the 
opposition.  Mr.  James  Lowther,  who  several  times 
held  office  under  a  Conservative  government,  and 
was  for  a  while  chief  secretary  to  the  lord  lieutenant 
of  Ireland,  was  celebrated  in  the  House  for  his  early 
career  of  dashing  and  unabashed  obstruction.  Sir 
Charles  Dilke,  at  one  period  of  his  political  life,  was 
as  indomitable  and  fearless  an  obstructionist  as  the 
House  of  Commons  has  ever  seen. 

Obstruction  is,  then,  and  always  was,  a  recognized 
weapon  of  parliamentary  warfare.  Let  me  assure 
my  American  readers  that  any  one  who  disputes 
this  assertion  either  does  not  know  what  he  is 
talking  about,  or  gives  a  denial  which  is  meant  to 
deceive.     Why,  then,  was   there  such   a   shriek   of 


OBSTRUCTION.  6 1 

universal  indignation  against  the  Irish  obstruction- 
ists ?  For  one  reason,  because  they  were  Irish, 
because  they  refused  to  consult  the  convenience  or 
the  interests  of  either  of  the  two  great  political 
parties.  It  seemed,  to  the  ordinary  British  member 
of  Parliament,  as  if  the  world  were  coming  to  an 
end,  when  he  heard  these  Irishmen  declaring  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  declaring  with  all 
appearance  of  thorough  sincerity,  that  they  did 
not  care  three  straws  for  the  convenience  of  the 
Liberals,  or  of  the  Tories ;  for  the  opinions  of 
the  London  daily  papers,  or  the  London  clubs.  I 
do  not  say,  however,  that  this  is  all.  It  is  not  by 
any  means  all.  Up  to  that  time,  obstruction,  as 
practically  known  to  the  House  of  Commons,  had 
taken  the  form  of  obstruction  to  some  one  particu- 
lar measure.  When  Peel  obstructed  the  Reform 
Bill,  he  did  not  say,  or  allow  it  to  be  understood, 
that  he  would  obstruct  every  measure  introduced 
by  the  Government  of  Lord  Grey  and  Lord  John 
Russell.  When  Gladstone  obstructed  the  Divorce 
Bill,  his  policy  was  known  to  apply  to  the  Di- 
vorce Bill  only.  When  Pope  Hennessy  obstructed 
for  Disraeli,  he  always  at  least  professed  to  be 
opposing  only  some  one  particular  measure ;  and, 
although  he  and  his  leader  may  have  had  in  their 


62  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

own  minds  some  clear  idea  of  delaying  and  discredit- 
ing the  whole  work  of  the  administration,  yet  they 
certainly  never  allowed  any  intention  of  that  kind  to 
find  expression  in  words.  But  Mr.  Parnell  and  his 
party  boldly  and  repeatedly  avowed  their  intention 
to  obstruct  all  parliamentary  business  until  Irish 
grievances  had  had  a  fair  hearing.  This  was  what 
exasperated  and  infuriated  the  average  Englishman. 
The  average  Englishman  knew  nothing  then  about 
Home  Rule ;  and  for  him  to  be  told  in  the  coolest 
way  that  no  work  was  to  be  done  in  the  English 
Parliament  until  the  Home  Rule  question  had  been 
duly  considered,  was  about  as  trying  to  the  temper 
as  to  be  informed  that  some  naughty  child  had  de- 
termined never  to  cease  squalling  in  his  ears  until 
the  squaller  got  the  moon  for  a  plaything.  The 
comic  periodical,  "  Punch,"  actually  did  suggest,  in 
not  very  decorous  fashion,  that  the  obstructives 
should  be  treated  in  just  the  way  which  the  importu- 
nate infant  would  be  likely  to  come  in  for  if  he 
kept  up  his  wailings  too  long.  Let  me  do  justice 
to  the  average  Englishman.  He  had  no  reason  to 
suppose,  educated  in  the  way  he  had  been,  that 
the  six  or  seven  men  who  were  known  as  obstruc- 
tionists really  represented  a  national  cause,  and  had 
a  people  behind  them.     These  men  had  come  into 


obstruction:  63 

Parliament  without  any  previous  political  career. 
Not  one  of  them  was  known  even  by  name  to  the 
English  newspaper  -  reader.  The  whole  lot  were 
disavowed  by  all  the  other  Irish  members  of  Par- 
liament, including  the  recognized  leader  of  the 
Home  Rule  party,  Isaac  Butt  himself.  A  member 
of  the  Irish  Home  Rule  party  publicly  denounced 
Mr.  Parnell  in  the  House  of  Commons,  as  an  ad- 
venturer who  was  willing,  for  the  sake  of  his  own 
personal  ambition,  to  drag  his  country  through  mire 
and  blood,  The  "  adventurer  "  was  a  man  of  high 
social  position,  the  descendant  of  a  brilliant  and 
a  famous  ancestry,  who  was  neglecting  and  ruining 
his  once  fine  property  for  the  sake  of  fighting 
Ireland's  cause  in  a  chill  and  hostile  House  of 
Commons.  At  that  time  the  suffrage  in  Ireland 
was  high  and  narrow,  and  it  was  hard  indeed  for 
any  man  to  get  into  Parliament  without  the  support 
of  the  landlord  and  the  local  aristocracy.  Therefore 
the  great  majority  of  the  members  of  the  Home 
Rule  party  were  not  nationalist  in  any  genuine 
sense ;  and  Mr.  Parnell  terrified  them  with  his 
awful  ideas  of  patriotic  duty,  and  the  hideous  sacri- 
fices he  proposed  to  exact.  True,  he  was  willing 
and  resolved  to  make  such  sacrifices  himself,  —  was 
already  making  them  ;   but  what   comfort  was  that 


64  IRELAND 'S   CA  USE. 

to  those  who  were  not  willing  to  make  them  ? 
What  did  the  average  Irish  member,  even  of  the 
Home  Rule  party,  —  what  did  he  come  into  Parlia- 
ment for  ?  He  came  because  he  was  ambitious  of 
social  or  political  distinction  ;  he  wanted  to  make 
a  figure  in  debate.  If  he  was  a  lawyer,  he  wanted 
to  rise  to  the  bench  ;  and,  for  an  Irish  lawyer,  the 
vestibule  to  the  judicial  bench  is  almost  always 
the  House  of  Commons.  If  he  had  no  political 
or  public  ambition,  he  wanted  to  get  into  London 
society ;  he  wanted  to  be  invited  to  dinner  at  the 
house  of  some  great  minister ;  he  wanted  to  have 
his  wife  and  his  daughters  asked  to  the  big  official 
parties  at  the  house  of  the  prime  minister  and  the 
foreign  secretary.  Something  like  this  was  what 
he  really  wanted.  What  he  said  by  speech  or  vote 
once  in  every  session,  — that  is,  once  in  every  year, 
—  was,  that  he  wanted  Home  Rule  for  Ireland. 
Fancy  his  feelings  of  natural  irritation  against  a 
young  man  who,  himself  belonging  to  the  higher 
rank,  actually  did  not  care  about  his  own  class 
more  than  about  any  other  ;  who  would  not  go  to 
a  Whig  or  Tory  prime  minister's  dinner  if  he  were 
besought  to  do  so  on  bended  knees  ;  who  laid  it 
down  as  a  doctrine,  that,  while  things  were  as  they 
were,  earnest  Irish  members  ought  to  stand  reso- 


OBSTRUCTION.  65 

lutely  out  of  English  society.  Fancy  with  what 
scorn  and  anger  our  Irish  members  would  repudiate, 
in  the  hearing  of  English  members,  any  suggestion 
about  "that  young  fellow  Parnell "  being  entitled  to 
speak  for  any  class  in  Ireland  !  No  doubt,  the  scorn 
would  be  all  the  more  scornful,  the  anger  all  the 
more  angry,  because  this  Irish  member  was  feeling 
within  himself  a  growing  and  an  agonizing  suspi- 
cion that  the  young  fellow  Parnell  would  be  likely 
to  have  the  country  with  him  some  day  ;  and  where 
then  would  be  the  dinners  and  the  balls,  and  the 
various  delights  of  London  society  ?  "  It's  all  very 
well  for  Parnell,"  I  heard  an  outspoken  grumbler 
of  this  order  once  complain.  "  He  hasn't  any  wife, 
and  he  hasn't  any  daughters ;  and  he  could  have 
all  that  social  sort  of  thing  if  he  wanted  it  anyhow. 
He  ought  to  make  some  allowance  for  others." 
Naturally,  the  average  English  member  took  his 
opinions  about  Ireland  from  this  average  Irish 
member.  I  am  not  saying  any  thing  unreasonable, 
any  thing  that  ought  even  to  surprise  a  reader, 
when  I  say  that  the  men  who  hated  Parnell  most 
of  all  were  to  be  found  at  one  time  in  the  ranks  of 
that  very  party  to  which  he  himself  belonged. 

It    is    not    wonderful    if    under    such    conditions 
English  statesmen  and  the  English   Parliament  re- 


66  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

garded  Parnell  and  his  party  as  mere  wanton  mis- 
chief makers.  Yet  the  little  band  whom  Parnell 
inspired  and  led,  had  before  them  a  high  and  a 
clear  purpose  ;  a  purpose  sure  in  the  end  to  bring 
benefit  and  blessing  to  England  as  well  as  to  Ire- 
land. The  House  of  Commons  was  overloaded 
with  business.  The  House  of  Commons  under- 
takes and  attempts  to  manage  much  of  the  local 
affairs  of  all  the  counties  and  towns  in  England, 
Ireland,  Scotland,  and  Wales.  Not  a  gas-bill,  a 
water-bill,  a  drainage-bill,  a  railway-bill,  for  the 
smallest  town,  but  has  to  come  before  the  House, 
and  pass  through  all  its  stages  there.  I  have 
sometimes  wondered  within  myself  which  was  the 
greater  absurdity,  —  to  assume  that  the  House  of 
Commons  understood  the  local  wants  and  interests 
of  some  great  city  like  Manchester  or  Glasgow 
better  than  the  people  of  Manchester  and  Glas- 
gow, the  people  who  have  made  Manchester  and 
Glasgow,  or  to  assume  that  the  time  of  the  House 
of  Commons  and  of  the  imperial  Parliament  was 
properly  occupied  in  settling  the  gas  and  water 
arrangements  of  some  small  country  hamlet.  The 
House  of  Commons  undertook  to  manage  all  this 
vast  complication,  this  unending  supply,  of  local  busi- 
ness, and  also  to  manage  the  affairs  of  the  empire. 


OBSTRUCTION.  67 

One  inevitable  result  of  such  a  system  was,  that 
the  common  interests  of  the  countries  were  utterly 
neglected.  The  railway  companies,  the  gas  com- 
panies, the  great  municipal  corporations,  managed 
to  get  their  business  pushed  through  Parliament 
somehow.  Foreign  questions,  threatening  to  seek 
their  solution  by  way  of  war,  had  to  be  debated 
and  attended  to.  But  everybody's  business  was 
nobody's  business.  The  measures  which  concerned 
the  vast  majority  of  the  people  of  England,  Ireland, 
Scotland,  and  Wales,  being  in  theory  everybody's 
business,  became  in  practice  nobody's  business. 
Measures  of  the  most  vital  interest  to  the  com- 
munity, measures  affecting  the  health,  the  comfort, 
the  well-being,  the  very  lives,  of  the  poor  and  the 
workers,  were  postponed  session  after  session,  for 
ten,  twenty,  thirty  years.  Many  a  time  have  I 
heard  some  statesman  in  office  introduce  a  measure 
which  he  thus  described  as  necessary  to  the  wel- 
fare and  to  the  lives  of  some  great  class  of  workers 
in  the  community ;  and  the  same  measure  has 
been  postponed  year  after  year,  and  is  not  yet 
passed  into  law.  In  this  admitted  fact,  the  little 
band  who  were  led  by  Parnell  found  their  cue. 
Irish  interests  suffered  with  English  and  Scottish 
interests ;  but  the  Irish  members  maintained,  that, 


68  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

speaking  on  behalf  of  Ireland,  they  had  a  special 
cause  of  complaint.  Therefore,  what  they  said  to 
the  House  of  Commons  was,  in  substance,  this  : 
"We  do  not  want  to  be  in  your  imperial  Parlia- 
ment. We  ask  nothing  better  than  to  be  allowed 
to  relieve  you  of  all  our  national  and  local  busi- 
ness, and  to  manage  it  for  ourselves  in  an  Irish 
Parliament  in  Dublin.  We  admit  that  the  affairs 
of  England  and  of  Scotland  are  sacrificed  to  your 
present  preposterous  system,  and  we  are  sony  for 
it ;  but  if  the  English  and  Scotch  members  are 
willing  to  put  up  with  that  state  of  things,  we 
have  no  right  to  complain.  We  find,  that,  as  things 
now  go,  we  have  nothing  left  but  to  fight  for  our- 
selves and  for  our  own  country ;  and  we  say  to 
you,  then,  that  if  you  will  not  give  a  full  hearing 
to  the  grievances  of  Ireland,  we  will  not  allow 
you  to  get  through  any  other  business  what- 
ever." 

There  is  a  charming  poem  by  my  friend  Mr. 
William  Allingham,  called  "  Laurence  Bloomfield  in 
Ireland,"  in  which  we  find  a  classic  story  thrill- 
ingly  told  as  an  illustration  of  the  hero's  feelings 
on  some  subject  of  interest  to  his  country.  A 
Roman  emperor  is  persecuted  by  the  petition  of 
a    poor    widowed    woman,    who    prays    for    redress 


OBSTRUCTION.  69 

of  some  wrong  done  to  her  and  her  children.  The 
great  emperor  is  far  too  great,  his  mind  is  taken 
up  too  much  with  questions  of  imperial  interest, 
to  have  any  leisure  for  examining  into,  or  even  for 
reading,  this  poor  woman's  claim.  One  morning 
he  is  riding  forth  of  his  palace  gates,  at  the  head 
of  his  splendid  retinue,  and  the  widow  comes  in 
his  way,  right  in  his  path,  and  holds  up  her  peti- 
tion again,  and  implores  him  to  read  it.  He  will 
not  read,  and  is  about  to  pass  scornfully  on,  when 
she  flings  herself  on  the  ground  before  him,  her- 
self and  her  little  children,  just  in  the  front  of  his 
horse's  hoofs,  and  she  declares  that  if  he  will  not 
stay  and  hear  her  prayer,  he  shall  not  pass  on  his 
way  unless  he  passes  over  the  bodies  of  her  and 
of  her  children.  And  then,  says  Mr.  Allingham, 
"the  Roman,"  who  must  have  had  something  of 
the  truly  imperial  in  him,  "wheeled  his  horse 
and  heard."  This  was  the  feeling  with  which 
Parnell  and  his  party  went  into  the  work  of 
obstruction.  They  were  determined  to  fling  them- 
selves clown  in  the  way  of  the  imperial  Parlia- 
ment, and  stop  its  movement  until  it  heard  their 
claims,  or  passed  on  its  way  over  their  trampled 
bodies. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  manner  in  which  this  policy 


yO  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

was  misunderstood  and  misrepresented  almost  every- 
where, almost  by  every  one  in  England,  for  a  long 
time.  Let  me  give  one  curious  example  the  other 
way.  At  the  time  when  the  fury  against  obstruc- 
tion and  its  Irish  organizers  was  at  its  highest,  I 
happened  to  sit  at  a  London  dinner-table,  next  to  a 
young  lady,  member  of  a  family  which  bears  a  name 
renowned  through  all  the  world.  She  was  not  a 
politician,  and  she  was  not  naturally,  by  education, 
habits,  or  class,  in  any  manner  of  sympathy  with 
Irish  claims.  The  talk  was  of  Irish  obstruction,  and 
some  unpleasant  things  were  said,  which  I,  out  of 
consideration  for  my  hostess,  affected  not  to  hear. 
The  young  lady  suddenly  said  to  me,  "  I  suppose 
that  after  all  there  is  something  to  be  said  for  this 
Irish  obstruction.  Is  it  not  this,  —  is  it  not  that 
you  think  you  have  to  get  the  attention  of  a  man 
who  is  deaf  and  also  fast  asleep  ?  You  know  you 
can  only  rouse  him  by  shaking  his  shoulders  and 
shouting  in  his  ears  ;  but  you  do  not  mean  to  say 
that  you  consider  shaking  by  the  shoulders  and 
shouting  in  the  ears  are  the  proper  accompaniments 
of  a  civil  conversation  under  the  ordinary  conditions 
of  life."  I  assured  the  young  lady  that  no  mem- 
ber of  the  party  of  obstructives  could  have  possibly 
given  a  better  or  clearer   definition    of    the   policy 


OBSTRUCTION.  J I 

which  the  party  was  carrying  out.  We  were  satis- 
fied that  our  duty  was  to  rouse  the  English  public, 
deaf  hitherto  as  regarded  our  claims,  and  just  then 
fast  asleep ;  and  we  knew  that  there  was  no  other 
way  of  getting  attention  than  the  process  of  shaking 
by  the  shoulder  and  shouting  in  the  ear.  We  were 
convinced  that  if  once  we  could  get  the  full  atten- 
tion of  the  public  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales, 
we  should  be  sure  of  success.  The  only  way  to  obtain 
a  hearing  was  by  making  the  House  of  Commons 
itself  the  platform  from  which  to  speak  forth  our 
demands.  But  we  knew  that  mere  speech-making 
of  the  ordinary  and  familiar  kind,  even  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  would  never  get  a  hearing  from  the 
public.  We  knew,  on  the  other  hand,  that  if  we 
set  about  to  stop  all  other  business  but  ours,  we 
could  not  fail  to  get  the  attention  of  the  public. 
Of  course  we  should  be  denounced  for  some 
time ;  for  a  long  time,  perhaps.  But  sooner  or 
later  reasonable  people  would  begin  to  ask,  "  What 
is  the  demand  which  these  Irishmen  are  making? 
WThat  is  the  cause  which  they  are  advocating  in 
this  extraordinary  and  hitherto  unheard-of  way  ? 
They  are  defying  all  authority  and  all  public 
opinion ;  they  are  making  themselves  hated  ; 
they    are    undergoing    unspeakable    fatigue  ;    they 


72  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

are  braving  positive  danger, — how  if,  after  all, 
there  should  be  some  justice  in  their  demands?" 
If  it  once  could  come  to  this,  we  felt  that  all 
would   be   well. 


THE   CHANGE   OF  LEADERSHIP.  73 


CHAPTER   V. 

THE    CHANGE    OF    LEADERSHIP. 

I  WAS  not  one  of  those  earliest  obstructives  ;  the 
system  had  been  in  practice  for  some  time  before 
I  had  an  opportunity  of  taking  part  in  it.  But  I  may 
venture  to  say  that  I  was  one  of  the  very  first  who 
saw  from  the  outside  the  policy  and  the  objects  of 
the  obstructionists,  and  had  faith  in  them.  I  came 
into  the  House  of  Commons  in  time  to  take  a  part 
in  the  struggle  which  abolished  flogging  in  the  army 
and  navy.  I  may  add  that  I  was  elected  a  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons  without  any  reference 
whatever  to  obstruction ;  without  having  given  any 
promise  to  join  Mr.  Parnell's  little  band.  I  went 
into  the  House  of  Commons  determined  to  see 
things  for  myself,  and  to  give  my  support  to  what- 
ever party  or  section  I  had  reason  to  believe  was 
doing  the  best  work  for  Ireland. 

I  believe  most  of  my  friends  took  it  for  granted 
that  my  influence,  such  as  it  was,  would  be  given  to 


74  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

those  who  were  called  the  moderate  men  :  Mr.  Butt, 
Mr.  Shaw,  and  the  rest.  The  struggle  against  the 
flogging  system  and  its  success  satisfied  me  as  to 
the  wisdom  of  Mr.  Parnell's  policy.  I  remember 
that  at  the  time  Mr.  Chamberlain  told  me  it  also 
satisfied  him.  I  was  convinced  of  the  absolute  sin- 
cerity and  single-mindedness  of  Mr.  Parnell ;  and  I 
saw  in  him  a  man  of  genius  unmistakably  sent  to  do 
a  certain  work,  himself  hardly  conscious  as  yet  of 
any  particular  mission.  Never  was  there  a  human 
being  who  gave  himself  less  of  the  ways  and  the 
airs  of  a  man  with  a  mission.  Always  plain,  simple, 
straightforward,  intensely  practical,  he  hardly  ever 
talked  of  any  thing  but  the  work  of  the  very  hour, 
of  the  very  moment ;  he  did  not  seem  to  be  looking 
forward  into  any  far  future.  He  did  not  seem  to  be 
capable  of  forming  an  abstract  idea  about  any  thing. 
I  never  heard  him  speak  of  the  sun-burst,  of  the 
ancient  glories  of  Ireland.  I  never  heard  him  talk 
of  freedom  and  the  brotherhood  of  nations.  I  never 
heard  him  use  a  rhetorical  or  poetical  expression  of( 
any  kind.  For  all  an  outsider  could  see,  Parnell's 
whole  soul  and  sense  were  always  absorbed  in  the 
fate  of  the  particular  clause  of  the  particular  bill 
which  the  House  was  then  trying  to  discuss,  and 
which    he  was   trying   to   obstruct.       You  saw  the 


THE   CHANGE   OF  LEADERSHIP.  75 

heroic  in  him  only  in  his  absolute  freedom  from  any 
manner  of  self-conceit,  or  self-sufficiency,  or  self  of 
any  kind.  He  seemed  to  me  one  of  the  very  few- 
human  beings  I  had  ever  known,  in  whom  there  was 
neither  vanity  nor  fear.  There  was  something  al- 
most mechanical  in  his  way  of  compelling  himself  to 
do  things  which  he  did  not  like  to  do.  He  always 
hated  speech-making,  and  he  was  always  making 
speeches  —  because  he  thought  he  ought  to  make 
them.  He  believed  himself  to  be  an  incurably  bad 
speaker;  and  yet  he  kept  on  speaking,  as  if,  like 
Charles  James  Fox,  he  was  determined  to  improve 
himself  at  the  expense  of  his  audience.  Under  all 
his  manner  of  proud,  cold,  imperturbable  composure, 
we  who  knew  him  knew  that  there  was  a  tempera- 
ment singularly  nervous  and  sensitive.  Sometimes 
he  shrank  so  much  from  the  odious  task  of  deliver- 
ing a  speech,  that  he  had  to  force  himself  to  the  task, 
to  drive  his  spirit  at  it  as  one  may  drive  a  horse  at 
a  fence.  To  other  men,  to  many  other  men  in  the 
House,  speech-making  was  a  joy,  a  delight :  to  Par- 
nell  it  was  always  an  abhorred  nuisance.  He  suc- 
ceeded, unconsciously,  in  improving  to  a  surprising 
degree  his  style  of  speaking ;  he  made  a  greater 
advance  in  that  way  than  perhaps  any  other  man  in 
the  House  during  the  same  time.     An  orator  in  the 


y6  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

higher  sense  of  the  word  he  never  could  be,  for  he 
lacks  imagination  and  poetic  emotion  ;  but  so  far  as 
the  plainest,  clearest  arrangement  of  thought  and 
argument  and  words  can  make  a  man  eloquent, 
Parnell  certainly  is  eloquent.  Mr.  Gladstone  has 
said  of  Parnell  that  not  even  Lord  Palmerston  him- 
self was.  so  consummate  a  master  of  the  art  of  saying 
exactly  what  he  wanted  to  say  and  not  a  word  more. 
There  are  several  men  in  Parnell's  party  far  more 
eloquent  than  he  ;  but  no  man's  phrases  and  sayings 
stamp  themselves  on  the  public  mind,  and  will  live 
as  long  as  some  of  Parnell's  His  style  of  speaking 
somehow  corresponds  curiously  with  his  personal 
appearance  and  presence.  The  tall  form,  once 
straight  as  that  of  an  athlete,  now  prematurely 
bowed  by  illness  and  weariness  ;  the  clear-cut,  hand- 
some face,  clearly  cut  as  that  of  a  Greek  statue,  and 
almost  as  pallid  as  the  marble  of  the  statue  ;  the 
subdued  tone,  and  composed  manner  of  speaking ; 
the  self-control  which  crushes  into  submission  all 
natural  nervous  excitability,  and  enables  him,  in  the 
midst  of  no  matter  what  conditions  of  surrounding 
excitement,  to  maintain  the  appearance  of  a  cold  and 
almost  icy  quietude,  —  all  this  harmonizes  perfectly 
with  the  keen,  direct,  utterly  unrhetorical  style 
which  sends  each  argument  straight  and  sharp  to  its 


THE    CHANGE    OF  LEADERSHIP.  J  J 

purpose,  as  an  arrow  is  sent  to  its  mark.  One  of  the 
qualities  which  specially  inspire  Parnell's  followers 
with  confidence  in  him  is  his  unerring  power  of 
forming  a  judgment  as  to  the  best  course  to  be  taken 
under  suddenly  changed  conditions,  and  where  there 
is  no  time  for  deliberate  choice.  Then  he  shows  the 
instinct,  the  genius,  of  the  born  commander.  That 
gift  has  never  failed  him  in  the  hour  of  need. 

I  am  not  engaged  in  writing  the  history  of  the 
Parnell  movement.  That  work  has  been  done  in 
thorough  and  admirable  fashion  already,  by  my 
friend  Mr  T.  P.  O'Connor.  I  strongly  advise  every 
American  who  wants  to  know  all  about  the  move- 
ment, to  trace  its  currents  Lack  to  the  fountain- 
head,  to  know  the  living  men,  as  well  as  their 
forerunners  who  have  ceased  to  live,  —  I  strongly 
advise  every  such  American  to  read  Mr.  O'Connor's 
book.  I  am  only  endeavoring  to  make  clear  to 
American  readers,  in  a  sort  of  rapid  outline  sketch, 
the  case  we  have  to  make  for  Ireland,  and  the 
manner  in  which  we  have  conducted  that  case  in 
the  imperial  Parliament.  Mr  Parnell  then  broke 
away  from  Mr.  Butt's  leadership,  and  it  became 
with  every  day  more  and  more  clear  that  the  vast 
majority  of  the  Irish  people  were  entirely  with  him. 
Butt,  however,  was  not  disturbed  in  his  leadership, 


?8  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

—  his  nominal  leadership.  It  would  have  been  idle 
cruelty  to  disturb  him,  for  every  one  knew  that  his 
life  was  flickering  fast  away.  He  had  lived  many 
lives ;  he  had  crushed  into  his  career  too  much 
work  and  too  much  pleasure.  His  was  a  strenuous 
nature,  incapable  of  taking  care  of  itself  ;  and  he 
sank  prematurely  into  death.  Then  Mr.  William 
Shaw  was  elected  leader,  and  we  all  hoped  much 
from  him.  He  was  decidedly  an  able  man  ;  he  was 
an  Ulster  Presbyterian,  who  had  been  a  minister  of 
religion  and  a  preacher,  but  who  turned  to  commer- 
cial and  political  pursuits,  and  had  been  remarkably 
successful  thus  far  in  both.  He  had  a  somewhat 
rough  and  heavy  manner  of  speaking,  but  he  was 
a  very  effective  speaker  for  all  that,  and  had  distin- 
guished himself  years  before  in  the  great  debates 
on  Mr.  Gladstone's  bill  for  the  disestablishment  of 
the  Irish  State  Church.  Although  he  could  not 
compare  with  Butt  as  orator  and  parliamentarian, 
yet  we  expected  from  him  greater  energy  than  Butt 
had  lately  shown  ;  and  some  of  us  believed  that  he 
would  take  warning  from  Butt's  mistake  and  Butt's 
failure,  and  would  see  that  the  country  demanded 
really  energetic  action  from  the  Irish  party  and  its 
leaders.  Some  of  us,  too,  believed  that  it  would 
be  a  very  good   thing  to   have  behind  the  leader, 


THE   CHANGE   OF  LEADERSHIP.  79 

occasionally  pushing  him  on  if  needs  were,  a  sec- 
tion of  uncompromising  and  irrepressible  men.  It 
would,  we  thought,  be  an  advantage  sometimes  in 
our  parliamentary  tactics,  if  our  leader  were  able  to 
say  to  the  Government,  "I  am  offering  you  the 
very  maximum  of  our  terms.  You  will  never  get 
off  so  cheaply  again.  There  are  men  behind  me 
who  think  I  am  letting  you  off  too  cheaply  even 
now ;  but  I  can  give  you  these  terms  now,  now, 
now,  if  you  will  accept  them.  If  you  refuse  them, 
—  well,  you  will  never  get  the  same  offer  again; 
and  the  longer  you  delay,  the  harder  will  be  the 
terms."  It  seemed  to  me,  therefore,  that  in  having 
Shaw  for  our  parliamentary  leader,  with  Parnell 
behind  him,  we  were  making  a  very  satisfactory 
arrangement.  It  did  not  turn  out  so.  Shaw  dis- 
played no  energy,  and  very  soon  sank  into  the  posi- 
tion of  a  merely  nominal  leader.  He  had  no  heart 
for  the  work  :  he  could  not  bear  to  put  the  House 
of  Commons  against  him ;  he  could  not  stand  up 
against  the  bellowings  and  the  hate  of  that  very 
wild  mob,  an  excited  House  of  Commons.  He  did 
not  in  his  secret  soul  really  believe  in  the  obstruc- 
tion policy  at  all  ;  he  regarded  it  simply  as  the 
freak  or  the  craze  of  the  moment,  designed  to 
amuse  the  Irish  people  for  the  time,  and  destined 


8o  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

to  pass  away  without  having  accomplished  any  pur- 
pose. No  man  with  such  fears  and  feelings  could 
have  made  any  thing  of  the  position  Shaw  had  come 
to  hold.     Certainly  he  made  nothing  of  it. 

The  general  elections  of  1880  came  on  the 
country  suddenly,  and  as  a  surprise.  Parnell  was 
in  the  United  States,  raising  money  for  the  relief 
of  the  Irish  peasantry,  who  were  suffering  from  a 
winter  of  agricultural  failure  and  distress  ;  raising 
money,  also,  to  carry  on  our  political  agitation  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  He  hurried  home,  and 
flung  himself  into  the  electoral  campaign.  He 
took  the  bold  position  of  a  leader,  and  he  put  for- 
ward his  own  candidates,  in  one  or  two  instances 
against  the  candidates  approved  of  and  supported 
by  Mr.  Shaw.  Despite  all  the  influences  against 
him,  and  the  restricted  nature  of  the  Irish  suf- 
frage, he  was  successful  beyond  the  utmost  hopes 
of  his  followers.  He  turned  out  some  of  the 
greatest  and  most  powerful  Irish  landlords,  Liberal 
as  well  as  Tory,  and  put  in  followers  of  his  own 
in  their  places.  Some  of  the  best,  the  ablest,  the 
most  eloquent,  the  most  devoted  men  of  the  Irish 
nationalist  party,  came  into  Parliament  for  the 
first  time  in  this  early  part  of  1880.  Mr.  Sexton, 
Mr.   T.    P.    O'Connor,   Mr.   James   O'Kelly,   Mr.   T. 


THE    CHANGE    OE  LEADERSHIP.  8 1 

D.  Sullivan,  Mr.  Leamy,  were  among  them.  Mr. 
Parnell  could  count  on  a  considerable  number  of 
followers,  at  once  capable  and  devoted.  No  coun- 
try ever  had  better  men  to  serve  her.  Still  the 
immediate  effect  of  the  elections  was  to  split  the 
party  into  two.  It  came  about  in  this  way :  Our 
resolve,  after  Butt's  death,  was  to  elect,  at  the 
opening  of  every  session,  a  chairman  and  vice- 
chairman.  We  were  not  going  to  have  any  more 
leaders  in  perpetuity.  The  newer  and  more  earnest 
men  among  the  new-comers  were  of  opinion,  —  and 
so,  indeed,  were  some  of  the  old  guard  as  well,  — 
that  Mr.  Shaw  could  no  longer  be  endured  as  a 
leader ;  and  they  proposed  at  once  to  give  the  title 
of  leader  to  the  man  who  had  shown  that  he  could 
lead,  —  to  Parnell  himself.  Parnell  was  not  in 
favor  of  this  step.  He  did  not  wish  to  be  leader. 
He  thought  the  time  had  not  come  ;  that  he  was 
too  young  a  man  for  such  a  position.  His  idea 
was  that  Mr.  Shaw  would  have  to  be  displaced, 
but  that  another  member  of  the  party,  not  Par- 
nell, should  be  elected  chairman.  I,  for  one,  was 
strongly  opposed  to  this,  and  told  Parnell  privately 
that  if  there  was  to  be  any  change  I  would  myself 
insist  on  proposing  him  for  chairman,  if  no  one 
else  did.     But   I    told   him,   too,   that    I    personally 


82  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

thought  it  would  be  better  at  that  moment  to 
leave  things  as  they  were.  Things,  however,  could 
not  be  left  as  they  were.  I  think  now  that  I  was 
mistaken  in  my  opinion  at  the  time.  Mr.  Shaw 
was  deposed,  and  Mr.  Parnell  was  elected,  not, 
however,  by  a  very  large  majority;  and  Mr.  Shaw, 
and  nearly  all  of  those  who  supported  him,  passed 
from  our  side,  and  went  over  into  the  ranks  of 
our  enemies.  All  those  who  were  called,  and  who 
delighted  to  be  called,  "  the  moderate  men,"  were 
gone  from  among  us  ;  were  gone  to  strengthen 
the  hands  of  our  enemies. 

Of  our  enemies  ?  —  after  the  general  elections  of 
1880?  —  our  enemies?  Did  not  Gladstone  come 
into  power?  Was  he  not  the  prime  minister  of 
England,  with  Sir  Charles  Dilke  and  Joseph  Cham- 
berlain members  of  his  administration  ?  Where, 
then,  were  the  enemies  in  power?  The  truth  is, 
that  the  domestic  crisis  in  our  little  party  was 
but  an  incident  of  another  and  a  greater  crisis. 
We  had  helped  the  Liberals  into  office ;  we  had 
agitated  for  them,  struggled  for  them,  given  them 
the  benefit  of  the  Irish  vote  everywhere.  We 
were  satisfied  that  Mr.  Gladstone  and  the  Liberals 
would  give  the  fullest  and  fairest  hearing  to  every 
demand  the  Irish  national   representatives    had   to 


THE   CHANGE   OF  LEADERSHIP.  83 

make.  We  knew  —  some  of  us  did,  at  least  — 
that  Mr.  Gladstone  had  in  his  heart  much  sym- 
pathy with  the  national  aspiration,  and  that  he 
only  wanted  to  be  convinced  of  the  reasonableness 
and  the  practical  nature  of  the  demand  for  Home 
Rule.  He  wanted  to  be  convinced  of  two  things, 
—  first,  that  the  demand  was  a  really  national 
demand ;  and,  next,  that  a  practicable  scheme  of 
Home  Rule  could  be  made  out,  which  would  give 
Ireland  the  right  to  manage  her  own  affairs,  while 
preserving  all  the  integrity  of  the  imperial  system. 
Mr.  Gladstone  wanted  to  have  his  doubts  removed 
on  these  two  points  ;  and  that  done,  he  would  be 
a  Home  Ruler.  No  one  can  say  that  he  was  not 
perfectly  right  in  suspending  his  judgment  while 
these  doubts  remained  yet  unsolved.  He  was  only 
following  out  the  clear  line  of  duty  for  any  English 
statesman.  But  the  secession  from  the  ranks  of 
the  Irish  party  unquestionably  went  far  to  con- 
firm both  his  doubts.  The  men  who  seceded  with 
Mr.  Shaw  were,  as  a  rule,  all  highly  respectable 
men.  They  were  men  of  good  position ;  they 
were,  on  an  average,  older  and  more  mature  than 
our  men.  Some  of  them  were  men  of  undoubted 
ability  and  sincerity ;  some  had  done  good  work 
in    Ireland   and   for  Ireland.     Not   a  few,  however, 


84  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

were  mere  Whig  place-hunters  of  the  old-fashioned 
order.  When  these  men  all  left  us  and  turned 
against  us,  when  they  made  it  only  too  evident 
that  they  had  no  particular  zeal  for  that  Home 
Rule  cause  which  they  still  professed  to  profess,  — 
if  I  may  use  such  a  phrase, — then,  of  course,  it 
was  not  surprising  that  Mr.  Gladstone  should  find 
his  doubts  as  to  the  genuine  popularity  of  the 
Home  Rule  movement  gaining  new  force.  Nor 
would  it  have  been  surprising,  if,  accepting  as  true 
the  assertions  of  Mr.  Shaw  and  his  friends,  that  the 
policy  of  the  obstructives  was  only  a  new  toy  to 
amuse  the  country  for  a  brief  season,  and  then  to  be 
thrown  aside,  Mr.  Gladstone  should  have  thought 
in  his  secret  heart  that  a  country  which  could 
be  thus  beguiled  was  hardly  ripe  for  the  work  of 
national  self-government. 

Mr.  Shaw  and  his  friends  did  not  separate  them- 
selves from  us  on  the  ground  merely  that  we  had 
not  elected  Mr.  Shaw  as  our  leader.  Indeed,  some 
four  or  five  of  those  who  had  voted  for  Shaw  as 
chairman  of  the  party,  proved  themselves  afterwards 
to  be  among  the  sincerest  and  most  devoted  follow- 
ers of  Mr.  Parnell's  policy.  Mr.  Shaw  and  his  col- 
leagues soon  found  other  reason  for  open  severance 
from  us.     In   the    House    of    Commons,    as    most 


THE    CHANGE   OF  LEADERSHIP.  85 

Americans  know,  the  political  views  of  the  various 
sections  of  men  are  denoted  by  the  places  in  which 
they  sit.  There  are  two  broad  and  obvious  distinc- 
tions :  the  ministerial  side  of  the  House,  and  the 
opposition  side.  The  members  of  the  government, 
and  those  who  support  them,  sit  on  the  right  hand 
of  Mr.  Speaker ;  the  opposition,  on  his  left.  But 
then  there  is  also  an  important  subdivision  of 
benches  and  of  men.  Half-way  down  the  benches 
on  either  side,  runs  a  transverse  passage  from  the 
side  wall  to  the  floor  of  the  House,  and  this  passage 
is  called  the  gangway.  "  Below  the  gangway  "  is  a 
phrase  of  real  political  significance  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  in  English  political  life.  The  men 
who  sit  below  the  gangway  are  considered  to  be 
more  or  less  independent  in  their  action.  Those 
who  sit  below  the  gangway  on  the  ministerial  side 
are  indeed  supporters  of  the  ministry  and  the  min- 
isterial policy,  but  they  do  not  give  themselves  out 
as  thick-and-thin  supporters ;  they  claim,  or  are  at 
all  events  traditionally  understood  to  claim,  a  certain 
right  of  private  judgment.  In  the  same  way  the 
men  who  sit  below  the  gangway  on  the  side  of  oppo- 
sition profess  a  general  allegiance  to  the  leaders 
of  opposition,  but  do  not  acknowledge  themselves 
bound  to  follow  that  leadership  whithersoever  it  may 


86  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

think  fit  to  go.  Naturally  this  "below  the  gang- 
way "  independence  is  much  more  of  a  reality  among 
the  Liberals  than  among  the  Tories.  It  is  one  of  the 
conditions  of  a  Liberal  party's  existence,  that  some 
of  its  members  should  wish  to  go  faster  and  farther 
than  others.  But  the  ordinary  duty  of  a  Tory 
party  is  merely  to  resist  change,  and  there  is  there- 
fore little  occasion  or  opportunity  for  independ- 
ence of  judgment.  Now,  then,  we  were  to  have  a 
change  of  government,  and  consequently  a  general 
change  of  places,  in  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
Liberals,  who  had  been  sitting  in  opposition,  would 
cross  the  floor  to  the  right  of  Mr.  Speaker.  The 
Conservatives  were  doomed  to  take  their  places 
on  his  left,  in  what  is  called  the  cold  shade  of 
opposition.  Where  were  the  Irish  members  to 
sit  ? 

Where,  of  course,  —  Mr.  Shaw  and  his  friends 
contended,  —  but  with  their  allies  the  Liberals,  led 
by  Mr.  Gladstone  ?  "  We  have  brought  them  back 
to  office,  and  to  power ;  they  are  pledged  to  do  great 
things  for  Ireland.  Are  we  going  to  draw  away 
from  them,  and  to  sit  with  our  natural  enemies, 
the  Tory  opposition  ? "  This  seemed  at  first  a 
reasonable  declaration.     But  there  was  another  side 


THE   CHANGE   OF  LEADERSHIP.  8? 

to  the  question.  "  We,  the  Irish  nationalist  mem- 
bers," said  the  followers  of  Mr.  Parnell,  —  "  we  rep- 
resent a  principle,  an  idea,  not  a  mere  party.  We 
are  in  opposition  to  every  English  government 
which  does  not  pledge  itself  to  Home  Rule.  We 
can  make  no  distinction  of  persons  in  that  regard. 
We  have  great  faith  in  Mr.  Gladstone ;  but  neither 
he  nor  any  of  his  administration  has  made  one  single 
public  profession  of  sympathy  with  Home  Rule. 
Some  of  the  individual  men  are  with  us,  we  know, 
but  they  have  made,  as  yet,  no  public  declaration  of 
that  kind  ;  and  there  are  many  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
colleagues  who  are  not  in  the  least  likely  to  have 
any  manner  of  sympathy  with  our  cause.  Who 
believes,  for  instance,  that  the  Marquis  of  Harting- 
ton  is  in  favor  of  Home  Rule  ?  Why,  then,  should 
we  attach  ourselves  to  the  tail  of  the  Liberal  party  ? 
Our  place  is  still,  and  probably  will  be  for  a  long 
time  to  come,  on  the  benches  of  opposition.  Were 
Mr.  Gladstone's  Government  to  pass  every  measure 
of  minor  reform  for  Ireland  which  Irish  members 
could  ask,  we  must  still  stand  out  in  resolute  atti- 
tude of  formal  opposition,  so  long  as  that  Govern- 
ment denies  us  our  supreme  national  claim.  We 
must    maintain    the    unbroken    continuity   of    that 


88  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

national  protest  which  Ireland  has  been  making  for 
eighty  years  against  the  suppression  of  her  national 
Parliament.  To  attach  ourselves  now  to  the  Liberal 
party,  to  consent  to  renounce  our  attitude  of  oppo- 
sition, would  be  to  haul  down  the  national  flag,  to 
surrender  the  national  principle." 

That  was  the  view  which  prevailed  with  the 
friends  and  followers  of  Mr.  Parnell.  Mr.  Shaw 
and  his  companions  held  the  other  view.  We  re- 
mained in  our  old  places  on  the  opposition  benches. 
They  crossed  the  floor,  and  sat  with  the  ministe- 
rialists. The  split  was  complete.  One  or  two  true 
men  who  at  first  went  with  Shaw,  believing  him 
to  be  right,  afterwards  changed  their  minds  for 
good  and  honest  reason,  and  came  back  to  us,  and 
staid  with  us  ;  but,  save  for  these  exceptions,  the 
division  was  final.  Mr.  Shaw  and  his  section  were 
thenceforth  our  enemies.  In  many  a  crisis  in  the 
dark  years  that  followed,  I  have  remembered  the 
words  of  Macbeth,  and  have  thought  how  different 
might  have  been  some  of  our  struggles  against 
coercion,  if  only  we  had  the  full  strength  of  our 
party  with  us  :  — 

"Were  they  not  forced  with  those  that  should  be  ours, 
We  might  have  met  them  dareful,  beard  to  beard, 
And  beat  them  backward  home." 


THE   CHANGE   OF  LEADERSHIP.  89 

But  they  left  us  at  our  hour  of  need ;  and  a  heavy 
penalty  they  had  to  pay  for  it  afterwards,  when 
Ireland  got  her  chance  of  pronouncing  judgment 
upon  them. 


90  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

WHAT    CAME    OF    OBSTRUCTION. 

T'lTE  were  waiting  to  see  what  the  Government 
*  "  would  do.  We  had  no  expectation  of  any 
movement  being  made  in  the  direction  of  Home 
Rule  as  yet ;  but  we  were  anxious  about  the  land 
question.  There  had  been  a  very  severe  winter  in 
Ireland,  and,  in  consequence,  much  distress.  During 
that  winter  the  famous  Land  League  was  established 
by  Mr.  Parnell  and  Mr.  Davitt.  The  landlord  party 
were  shrieking  aloud  against  the  Land  League,  and 
calling  on  the  castle  authorities  in  Dublin  to  put  it 
down.  During  the  later  months  of  the  Tory  Gov- 
ernment there  had  been  a  ridiculous  attempt  at  a 
state  prosecution  of  Parnell  and  several  of  his  col- 
leagues, —  a  prosecution  which  utterly  broke  down. 
Now  that  the  Liberals  were  in  office,  we  had  great 
expectations  of  a  good  land  bill ;  some  measure  to 
prevent  unjust  and  wanton  evictions,  and  to  prepare 
the  way  for  the  establishment  of  a  great  system  of 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION'.  9 1 

peasant  proprietary.  Mr.  Gladstone  had  intrusted 
the  management  of  Irish  affairs  to  the  late  Mr. 
W.  E.  Forster.  The  lord-lieutenant  of  Ireland, 
Lord  Cowper,  was  not  a  man  of  any  statesmanlike 
capacity ;  and  Mr.  Forster  as  chief  secretary  for  Ire- 
land—  chief  secretary  to  the  lord-lieutenant  is  the 
exact  title  of  the  office  —  had  Ireland  in  his  own 
hands.  We  Irishmen  were  all  well  pleased  with 
the  appointment.  Mr.  Forster,  when  a  young  man, 
became  known  to  the  people  of  Ireland  by  the  efforts 
which  he  made,  in  co-operation  with  his  father,  to 
relieve  the  famine-stricken  peasantry  in  1846  and 
1847.  If  I  remember  rightly,  the  elder  Forster 
died  in  Ireland  at  the  time.  We  all  felt  sure  that 
Mr.  Forster's  sympathies  would  go  cordially  with 
the  Irish  people.  The  first  session  of  the  new  Gov- 
ernment was  short ;  for,  by  the  time  the  elections 
were  over,  the  spring  had  well-nigh  gone  by.  We 
did  not  suppose  the  Government  could  do  much  to 
help  us,  that  session.  On  our  urgency  they  brought 
in  a  short  bill  to  stay  evictions  for  the  time ;  but  the 
House  of  Lords — a  house  of  landlords  —  promptly 
threw  it  out.  The  session  came  to  an  end.  When 
Parliament  was  called  together  in  1881,  we  were 
informed  that  the  Government  intended  to  bring  in 
a  land  bill  and  a  coercion  bill ;  and  that  the  coercion 


92  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

bill  was  to  come  first.  The  Radical  Government  was 
to  inaugurate  its  work  in  Ireland  by  a  coercion  bill. 
This  was  the  advice  of  Mr.  Forster :  he  insisted,  as 
a  condition  of  his  remaining  in  office,  that  he  must 
be  allowed  to  have  a  stern  coercion  measure  to 
begin  with.  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  one 
rational  man  in  English  politics  now  who  does  not 
admit  that  Mr.  Forster's  policy  was  a  fatal  blunder. 
The  announcement  was  met  with  a  cry  of  disap- 
pointment and  anger  from  the  Irish  people.  The 
Government  had  declared  war  against  us.  We,  for 
our  part,  declared  war  against  the  Government. 
Our  hopes  from  the  Liberal  alliance  were  gone.  We 
had  no  course  left  but  to  fight  the  coercion  bill  at 
every  stage  and  step  and  by  every  means  which  the 
Constitution  and  the  rules  of  Parliament  put  in  our 
power.  Mr.  Forster,  who  had  begun,  I  am  satisfied, 
in  the  best  spirit  towards  the  Irish  people,  seemed 
to  have  come  to  hate  them.  He  had  misunderstood 
them  from  the  first.  He  was  apparently  under  the 
impression  that  they  would  endure  meekly  a  coer- 
cion bill,  if  only  he  were  to  speak  them  fair  mean- 
time, and  promise  them  that  a  land  bill  should  follow. 
He  did  not  understand  that  they  would  naturally 
resent  a  coercion  bill  more  bitterly  if  it  came  from 
the  hands  of  those  whom  they  had  believed  to  be 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION-.  93 

their  friends,  than  if  it  came  from  those  whom  they 
knew  to  be  their  enemies.  Even  if  the  Government 
had  brought  in  the  land  bill  first  and  the  coercion 
bill  afterwards,  there  might  have  been  some  hope 
of  continued  amity ;  but,  as  it  was,  Mr,  Forster's 
advice  proved  fatal. 

I  would  ask  my  American  readers  to  consider 
what  was  then  the  position  of  Mr.  Parnell's  party. 
We  were  left  alone  to  front  the  situation,  and  take 
our  resolve.  Our  resolve  was  soon  taken  :  we  were 
bound,  at  any  risk,  to  resist  the  passing  of  the 
coercion  bill.  There  was  really  no  excuse  for  such 
a  measure.  Ireland  was  disturbed  in  certain  dis- 
tricts, —  disturbed  by  merely  agrarian  disturbance, 
the  trouble  all  arising  out  of  the  failure,  or  partial 
failure,  of  the  crops,  and  the  frequent  and  cruel 
evictions.  The  very  knowledge  that  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  going  to  bring  in  a  land  bill  for  the  benefit  of 
the  tenants  and  the  restraint  of  the  landlord's  odious 
power  was,  for  the  present,  only  a  fresh  stimulus  to 
the  evicting  and  rack-renting  land-owners  to  make 
hay  while  their  sinister  sun  yet  shone ;  to  screw  all 
they  could  out  of  the  soil  and  the  tenants  while  yet 
the  screw  was  fully  theirs  to  use.  Therefore  the 
landlord  evicted,  and  the  evicted  man  sometimes 
had    his  wild    revenge ;   but   the   ordinary  law   was 


94  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

quite  strong  enough  for  any  cases  with  which  law 
could  deal.  There  were  cases  with  which  law  could 
not  deal.  When  a  harsh  landlord  was  fired  at  from 
behind  a  hedge,  —  when  he  was  killed  even,  —  it 
was  sometimes  found  impossible  to  get  any  evi- 
dence on  which  to  convict.  Even  those  who  hated 
the  deed  sometimes  felt  in  their  own  persons  so 
keen  a  perception  of  the  nature  of  the  provocation 
as  to  be  unwilling  to  give  up  the  breaker  of  the  law 
to  justice.  All  this  is  very  deplorable ;  but  all  this 
is  in  human  nature,  and  would  happen  anywhere 
under  the  like  conditions  ;  but  in  cases  of  that  kind 
there  was  no  use  of  a  coercion  act.  A  coercion  act 
could  not  authorize  any  judge  and  jury  to  declare  a 
man  guilty  when  there  was  no  evidence  against  him ; 
and  the  sympathy  with  the  crime  came  from  just  the 
same  sources  as  the  crime  itself,  —  the  rack-rent  and 
the  eviction.  We  felt  all  this  ;  and  we  felt  that  all 
the  strength  we  had  must  be  given  to  the  resistance 
of  coercion.  Ireland  had  always  been  governed  by 
coercion.  We  saw  that  the  time  had  come  to  resist 
any  more  coercion  measures,  even  though  they  came 
from  men  declaring  themselves  our  friends,  and  de- 
claring, too,  that  coercion  was  a  necessary  prelimi- 
nary to  land  reform.  If  you  cannot  govern  Ireland 
without  coercion,  we  said,  then,  in  Heaven's  name, 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION.  95 

cease  to  try  to  govern  at  all.  You  confess  your 
own  incapacity  to  govern  the  country,  by  your  very 
demand  for  this  measure,  without  which  you  say  the 
country  cannot  be  governed.  Cannot  be  governed  ? 
Well,  perhaps  not;  not  by  you.  Give  us  a  trial:  let 
Irishmen  manage  their  own  domestic  affairs  for 
themselves,  and  we  shall  see  whether  Ireland  can- 
not be  ruled  without  coercion  bills. 

We  were  then  about  twenty  strong,  all  told  ;  and 
the  House  of  Commons  contains  some  six  hundred 
and  fifty  members.  With  the  exception  of  some 
half  a  dozen  stout  English  Radicals  who  were  always 
on  our  side,  the  whole  House  was  against  us.  Every 
man's  hand  was  against  us,  but  I  am  bound  to 
admit  that  our  hand  was  against  every  man.  We 
made  a  great  many  speeches  in  those  days.  The 
House  of  Commons  did  not  always  listen  to  us, 
but  we  made  our  speeches  all  the  same.  We  kept 
the  House  sitting  through  long  and  weary  nights ; 
we  kept  the  House  sitting  once  from  four  o'clock 
on  the  Monday  afternoon  until  six  o'clock  on  the 
following  Wednesday  evening,  no  intermission  of 
debate  all  that  time.  We  went  in  for  open  and 
avowed  obstruction ;  we  declared  that,  so  long  as 
we  could,  we  would  resist  the  Coercion  Bill.  Then 
they  tried  to  amend  their  procedure,  and  made  all 


g6  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

sorts  of  new  rules  to  introduce  a  closure,  meant,  of 
course,  only  for  the  Irish  members,  —  I  mean  those 
who  called  themselves  emphatically  the  Irish  mem- 
bers. Once  or  twice  the  Speaker  accomplished 
a  very  coup  d'etat,  and  brought  a  long  debate  to 
a  sudden  close.  We  were  each  of  us  suspended 
from  the  service  of  the  House.  We  were  all  of  us 
expelled  from  the  House  in  a  body  on  one  memor- 
able evening ;  each  of  us  refusing  to  leave  the 
House  until  the  sergeant-at-arms  had  gone  through 
the  formula  of  using  force  to  carry  out  the  mandate 
of  the  majority.  Of  course  we  came  back  again 
next  day,  or  on  whatever  day  the  sentence  of  sus- 
pension expired ;  and  we  went  on  with  our  work  of 
obstruction  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  We  were 
doing  just  what  we  wanted  to  do  ;  we  were  arous- 
ing the  attention  of  England  and  Scotland  and  the 
civilized  world.  Our  cause  was  gaining  every  day 
in  Ireland,  and  among  the  Irish  in  America  and 
Australia.  Whenever  chance  threw  an  election  in 
our  way  by  the  promotion,  resignation,  or  death  of 
some  Whig  Irish  member,  we  sent  our  own  can- 
didate forward,  and  he  was  elected  by  an  over- 
whelming majority  if  the  opponents  ventured  on  a 
contest.  Great  meetings  were  being  held  all  over 
Ireland,  which  we  attended  as  often  as  we  could ; 


WHAT  CAME    OF  OBSTRUCTION.  97 

and  we  saw  with  our  own  eyes  that  the  whole 
country  was  rallying  to  our  side.  We  felt  safe 
and  tranquil ;  we  knew  that  Ireland  was  with  us  ; 
we  said  to  ourselves,  "Yet  a  little,  and  England, 
Scotland,  and  Wales  will  be  with  us  too." 

Which  came  to  pass.  In  the  old  days  when  we 
were  as  yet  only  seven  or  eight,  we  used  to  take 
a  great  many  divisions  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
A  division  in  the  House  of  Commons  is  a  process 
which  occupies  some  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  in  its 
operation.  If  an  Irish  member  happened  to  differ 
very  often  in  the  course  of  a  sitting  from  the  opinion 
of  the  majority  of  the  House,  and  chose  to  give 
expression  and  form  to  his  differing  opinion  through 
the  constitutional  and  altogether  legitimate  medium 
of  a  division,  the  result  would  at  least  be,  that  some 
intervals  of  relief  were  secured  for  outworn  orators 
on  the  Parnellite  benches.  A  division  in  the  House 
of  Commons  is  not  taken  in  the  same  way  as  a 
division  in  any  American  legislative  chamber  of 
which  I  know  any  thing.  In  the  House  of  Com- 
mons the  plan  is,  that  all  those  who  vote  "aye" 
pass  through  one  lobby,  and  all  who  vote  "  no  "  pass 
through  the  other.  The  lobbies  are  long,  spacious 
corridors  or  ante-rooms,  running  each  one  the  whole 
length   of   the   chamber  itself;   the  two   belt  round 


98  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

the  chamber  like  a  girdle,  and  each  lobby  will  hold 
some  hundreds  of  men.  Now,  when  we  took  a 
division  in  those  old  days,  we  seven  or  eight  Irish- 
men passed  into  one  lobby,  and  the  whole  House  of 
Commons  streamed  down  the  other.  We  had  in  the 
House  at  that  time  a  genial,  not  to  say  jovial,  Irish 
member,  a  man  who,  although  of  the  landlord  class, 
very  often  gave  us  his  sympathy  and  his  vote.  He 
was  not  much  good  at  the  making  of  speeches,  and 
so,  I  suppose,  he  thought  he  was  bound  to  keep  up 
our  spirits  by  his  odd  humors  and  his  pleasant  ways. 
Sometimes  when  we  were  going  through  the  division 
lobby,  we  poor  forlorn  seven  or  eight  dragging  our 
slow  footsteps  along  that  lengthy,  lonely  corridor, 
while  the  whole  House  of  Commons  was  streaming 
blithely  down  the  other  lobby,  our  good-humored 
friend  would  appear  in  front  of  us,  and  waving  his 
right  arm  encouragingly  over  his  head  would  exclaim 
in  the  most  cheery  tone,  "Well,  boys,  here  we  are 
again  in  our  thousands  !  "  Or  some  other  time  while 
the  same  process  was  going  on,  our  friend  would  be 
seen  close  up  to  the  still-unopened  door  of  the  divis- 
ion lobby  at  the  farther  end,  and  he  would  all  of  a 
sudden  come  to  a  stand,  and  throw  his  arms  wildly 
out  behind  him,  and  he  would  be  heard  to  cry  in 
panic-stricken  voice,  "  Keep  back,  boys !     Don't  be 


WHAT  CAME    OF  OBSTRUCTION.  99 

crushing  on  in  that  way !  There's  room  enough  for 
us  all !  I  tell  you  we'll  all  get  through  in  time,  every 
one ;  only  don't  crush  us  against  the  doors." 

Our  good-humored  friend  is  not  now  in  the  House 
of  Commons  or  in  public  life.  I  thought  of  him  a 
good  deal  one  memorable  morning  in  the  House  of 
Commons  in  the  session  of  1886.  I  thought  of  him  ; 
and  it  was  borne  in  upon  my  mind,  that  if  he  were 
then  a  member  of  Parliament  he  might  have  seen 
his  whimsical  fantasy  actually  turned  to  reality  ;  he 
might  have  found  himself  in  a  fair  way  to  be  crushed 
against  the  door  of  that  same  lobby  by  the  crowd  of 
eager,  impassioned  men,  hurrying  to  record  their 
votes  for  Home  Rule.  That  was  on  a  memorable 
night,  or  rather  morning,  in  the  session  of  1886, 
when  I  found  myself  passing  down  that  same  lobby, 
no  longer  one  of  a  little  group  of  seven  or  eight 
Home  Rulers,  but  one  of  a  party  of  three  hundred 
and  eleven  Home  Rulers  led  by  Mr.  Gladstone 
himself.  What  had  brought  about  that  marvellous 
change  in  so  short  a  space  of  time  ?  What,  indeed, 
under  Heaven,  but  our  much-misunderstood,  much- 
ridiculed,  much-denounced  obstruction  ?  We  had 
done  what  we  said  we  would  do  and  could  do  :  we 
had  roused  the  whole  mind  and  heart  of  true  British 
liberalism  to  a  recognition  of  the  justice  of  our  case. 


100  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

We  knew  that  if  we  could  only  get  a  hearing,  we 
must  win  our  cause  ;  and  we  persevered  until  we  got 
a  hearing.  Mr.  Gladstone's  recent  Reform  Bill,  on 
which  Liberals  and  Tories  were  at  last  united,  —  the 
Tories  helping  only  of  course  because  they  could  not 
hinder,  and  wanted  to  try  to  make  the  best  of  things 
for  their  own  sakes, — that  Reform  Bill  gave  to  the 
two  islands  a  representation  broader  and  better  than 
they  ever  had  before.  It  gave  the  franchise  to  some 
two  millions  of  new  voters.  In  Ireland  it  enabled 
the  great  mass  of  the  population  for  the  first  time  to 
enforce  their  political  convictions  by  a  vote.  The 
result  in  Ireland  was  that  we  carried  eighty-six  of 
the  constituencies  out  of  the  whole  hundred  and 
three.  It  may  be  pointed  out,  too,  that  there  are 
only  one  hundred  and  one  seats  which  we  could 
possibly  have  contested.  The  University  of  Dublin 
has  two  representatives  in  the  House  of  Commons  ; 
but  then,  the  University  of  Dublin  elects  by  virtue 
of  its  own  peculiar  academic  franchise,  with  which 
the  general  public  have  nothing  to  do.  There 
were,  therefore,  really  one  hundred  and  one  seats 
to  be  contested ;  and  out  of  these  hundred  and 
one  seats,  the  nationalist  party  captured  eighty-six. 
Not  merely  did  they  carry  all  these  seats,  but  in 
almost  every  case  in  which  there  was  a  contest  the 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION.  IOI 

nationalists  won  by  enormous  and  overwhelming 
majorities.  As  for  the  "nominal  Home  Rulers," 
the  men  who  had  fallen  away  from  us  in  the  hour 
of  danger  and  darkness,  their  fate  was  dramatic, 
was  instructive.  They  simply  disappeared.  Not 
one  of  them,  no,  not  one,  was  sent  to  Parliament 
again  by  an  Irish  constituency.  There,  then,  was 
the  answer  given  to  one  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  ques- 
tions, the  settlement  of  one  of  his  doubts.  The 
nationalists  did,  then,  unquestionably,  speak  with 
the  voice  and  in  the  name  of  the  Irish  people. 
The  Irish  people  did  deliberately  demand  Home 
Rule.  Mr.  Gladstone  accepted  the  will  of  the  Irish 
people  ;  and  he  brought  in  his  great  measure  to 
give  to  the  Irish  people  the  right  of  making  laws 
for  Ireland.  His  scheme  was  defeated  by  a  com- 
bination of  renegade  Liberals  with  the  Tory  oppo- 
sition ;  and  he  appealed  to  the  country,  and  was 
defeated  at  the  elections,  and  the  Tories  came  into 
office.  But  let  us  examine  a  little  into  the  nature 
of  the  defeat.  In  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  Wales, 
the  great  majority  of  the  voters  voted  for  Glad- 
stone and  Home  Rule.  It  would  be  hardly  too 
much  to  say  that  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  Wales 
went  solid  for  Gladstone  and  Home  Rule.  It  was 
in    England  that   Gladstone  and   Home   Rule  were 


102  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

defeated.  But  let  us  see  how  they  were  defeated, 
even  in  England.  I  am  strongly  of  opinion,  that, 
although  the  majority  of  English  votes  was  against 
Gladstone,  the  majority  of  English  voters  was  with 
him,  even  in  that  election  where  England  defeated 
him.  This  will  perhaps  seem  paradoxical  and  unin- 
telligible to  an  American  reader,  at  first  ;  but  I 
shall  make  it  quite  clear  and  reasonable.  In  Eng- 
land, if  a  man  have  the  qualification  in  several 
constituencies,  he  can  give  a  separate  vote  in  each 
of  these  constituencies.  We  do  not  take  our  elec- 
tions as  America  does,  all  on  the  same  day.  We 
spread  our  general  elections  over  several  weeks. 
If  we  give  a  man  the  right  to  record  several  votes, 
we  give  him,  also,  plenty  of  time  to  go  up  and 
down  the  country,  and  to  drop  his  various  ballot- 
papers  into  so  many  different  ballot-boxes.  We 
take  care  of  our  men  of  property  in  England  ;  for, 
of  course,  only  property  can  confer  this  plurality  of 
vote.  A  man  has  two  or  three  country  residences, 
each  in  a  different  electoral  division  ;  he  can  vote 
in  each  of  these  electoral  divisions.  He  has  a 
town-house  in  London  ;  he  can  vote  in  that  divis- 
ion of  London  also.  Perhaps  he  is  a  banker  or  a 
lawyer,  having  offices  or  chambers  in  the  City  of 
London  proper ;   very  good,  then   he    has    his   vote 


WHAT  CAME    OF  OBSTRUCTION.  IO3 

for  the  City  of  London  election.  A  friend  of  my 
own,  a  stanch  Conservative,  told  me  that  at  the 
elections  which  overthrew  Mr.  Gladstone,  he  him- 
self gave  eight  separate  votes  against  Gladstone  and 
Home  Rule.  My  friend  is  not  a  territorial  mag- 
nate ;  only  a  man  of  some  position  and  means,  who 
has  a  town-house  and  a  country-house,  a  place  of 
business  in  the  city  of  London  proper,  a  manufac- 
tory in  a  county  town,  and  a  residence  near  the 
manufactory,  and  two  or  three  small  places  of  resi- 
dence, shooting-boxes  and  such  like,  in  different 
parts  of  the  country.  These  places  altogether  made 
him  the  possessor  of  eight  votes ;  and,  acting  after 
his  lights  like  a  true  Conservative,  he  gave  (and 
small  blame  to  him)  his  eight  votes  against  Glad- 
stone and  Home  Rule.  But  there  are  thousands 
of  men  in  the  country  far  richer  than  he,  and  with 
a  wider  range  of  qualifications  entitling  them  to 
give  separate  votes.  It  will  naturally  be  asked, 
Why  did  not  Gladstone's  followers  do  the  same  ? 
Was  not  the  law  the  same  for  them  as  for  the 
others  ?  Undoubtedly  the  law  was  the  same  for 
them  as  for  the  others ;  but  observe  who  the  Glad- 
stonians  were,  and  who  the  others.  Who  were 
the  men  who  mainly  supported  Gladstone  in  Eng- 
land ?     Who  were   they  who  formed  the  rank  and 


104  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

file  of  his  brave  and  true-hearted  army  ?  Why, 
who,  of  course,  but  the  members  of  the  English 
democratic  party,  the  workers  of  all  kinds,  the  arti- 
sans in  the  towns,  the  peasants  on  the  fields  in  the 
counties  ?  These  were  the  men  who  followed  Glad- 
stone, and  there  was  no  plurality  of  votes  for  them. 
Show  me  the  English  artisan  or  English  peasant 
who  has  a  vote  here  and  a  vote  there,  and  I  will 
show  you  an  English  artisan  who  has  a  shooting- 
lodge  in  the  Highlands,  and  an  English  peasant 
who  has  a  town  residence  in  Belgravia.  No,  the 
artisans  and  the  peasants  do  not  as  a  rule  amass 
property,  and  acquire  various  qualifications ;  one 
man,  one  vote,  is  the  law  of  life  for  them.  Who 
were  against  Gladstone  ?  Why,  of  course,  in  the 
main,  the  aristocrats  and  the  plutocrats,  the  men 
of  property  and  of  many  votes.  Some  time  we  shall 
set  this  right  in  England,  and  allow  no  man  to  have 
more  than  one  vote.  But  so  far  it  has  not  been 
set  right,  and  it  overthrew  Mr.  Gladstone  at  the 
last  elections.  I  think  my  American  readers  will 
now  understand  the  meaning  of  my  assertion  that, 
while  in  those  elections  the  majority  of  English 
votes  was  against  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  majority  of 
English  voters  was  in  his  favor. 

This,  then,  we  have  accomplished  for  Home  Rule. 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION.  105 

We  have  made  it  not  merely  the  question  of  an 
Irish  party,  but  the  question  of  Ireland ;  and  not 
the  question  of  Ireland  merely,  but  the  question 
of  all  the  liberalism  of  the  two  islands.  Already 
Mr.  Gladstone  has  done  what  no  statesman  ever 
succeeded  in  doing  before,  —  he  has  reconciled 
the  English  and  the  Irish  people.  How  many 
of  us  had  through  years  and  years  longed  and 
prayed  for  such  a  reconciliation,  but  hardly  dared 
to  hope  for  it,  or,  at  least,  to  think  that  it  could 
come  to  pass  !  And,  now  behold,  it  has  come  to 
pass,  and  by  means  of  the  Home  Rule  question. 
The  whole  democracy  of  the  two  islands  are  made 
into  one  party.  When  William  O'Brien  goes  down 
from  Dublin  to  take  his  trial  in  Cork  County,  he 
is  welcomed  at  every  station  by  crowds  who  cheer 
for  "William  O'Brien  and  the  English  people." 
The  English  members  of  Parliament,  and  demo- 
cratic delegates,  pour  over  to  Ireland,  and  speak  at 
great  meetings  of  the  national  league.  Labouchere  ; 
Jacob  Bright,  brother  of  John  Bright ;  Brunner ; 
Philip  Stanhope,  brother  of  Tory  Earl  Stanhope 
and  of  Edward  Stanhope,  war  minister  in  the 
present  Tory  Government ;  Conybeare ;  Professor 
Stuart;  Pickersgill, — these,  and  numbers  of  other 
conspicuous  Radical  members  of  Parliament,  speak 


106  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

up  for  Home  Rule  on  Irish  national  platforms, 
as  warmly  and  strongly  as  any  Irishman  could  do. 
Wilfrid  Blunt,  who  secured  the  defence  of  Arabi 
Pasha;  Thorold  Rogers,  whose  name  is  as  well 
known  in  America  as  in  England,  —  rouse  up  Irish 
audiences  to  a  fervor  which  could  be  excelled  by 
no  Irish  speaker.  English  ladies  are  there  too, 
are  present  at  evictions,  and  attend  open-air  meet- 
ings. English  ladies  were  present  at  the  Mitchells- 
town  meeting,  and  could  only  by  the  earnest  per- 
suasions of  Mr.  Dillon  and  Mr.  Labouchere  and 
Mr.  Brunner,  be  prevailed  upon  to  go  under  shelter 
when  the  police  began  their  wanton  and  outrageous 
fusillade.  One  of  these  ladies  tells,  with  tears  in  her 
eyes,  how  a  tall  Tipperary  man  made  his  way  up  to 
the  side  of  her  carriage,  and  said,  "  English  ladies, 
you  have  trusted  yourselves  to  the  protection  of 
Tipperary  boys,  and  there  isn't  one  of  us  here  who 
won't  die  before  a  hair  of  your  heads  is  touched." 
Among  the  English  ladies  who  went  to  Ireland 
to  testify  to  her  sympathy  with  the  Irish  cause, 
was  Miss  Cobden,  the  daughter  of  John  Bright's 
old  friend  and  companion-in-arms,  Richard  Cobden. 
I  wonder  what  John  Bright  felt  when  he  read  the 
announcement,  and  if  he  realized  all  the  full  bearing 
of  the  fact  upon  his  own  altered  position.     Alas  for 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION.  107 

our  old  apostle  of  popular  right,  —  alas  for  John 
Bright  !  Alas,  too,  that  a  purely  personal  offence, 
or  supposed  offence,  should  have  estranged  him 
from  the  cause  of  Ireland  !  Let  us  pass  him  over 
with  the  charity  of  silence.  Among  the  English 
women  who  sympathize  with  the  Irish  national 
cause,  none  are  more  earnest  than  the  Countess 
Russell,  widow  of  the  great  Earl  Russell,  the  Lord 
John  Russell  of  the  first  Reform  Bill,  and  her 
daughter  Lady  Agatha  Russell. 

The  coining  of  Home  Rule  for  Ireland  is  as 
certain  as  the  rising  of  to-morrow's  sun.  The  split 
in  the  Liberal  party  is  not  only  a  familiar  accom- 
paniment of  a  great  reform  movement,  but  it  is 
the  invariable  and  inevitable  accompaniment  of 
every  such  movement.  There  was  a  split  in  the 
Liberal  party  on  the  reform  question  in  1830; 
there  was  a  split  in  the  Liberal  party  in  i860, 
when  Lord  John  Russell  brought  on  his  new  Re- 
form Bill,  and  the  seceders  joined  the  Tories,  and 
for  the  ame  defeated  the  bill.  When  Lord  Russell 
and  Mr.  Gladstone  brought  in  their  Reform  Bill  in 
1866,  there  was  another  split  in  the  Liberal  party, 
—  the  famous  Cave  of  Adullam  secession,  —  led  by 
a  far  abler  man  than  Mr.  Chamberlain, — the  pres- 
ent forgotten   Lord  Sherbrooke,  —  then  the  famous 


108  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

Mr.  Robert  Lowe.  Some  of  the  peers  and  mem- 
bers of  the  House  of  Commons  who  were  in  that 
secession  are  in  the  present  secession.  What  hap- 
pened then  ?  The  secession  delayed  reform  by 
just  one  year.  But  when  the  reform  came,  it 
came  from  Mr.  Disraeli,  and  was  of  a  much  more 
advanced  character  than  any  thing  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone and  Mr.  Bright  had  ventured  to  propose. 
And  this  brings  us  to  another  of  the  possibilities 
in  the  present  crisis.  We  may  get  Home  Rule 
from  the  Tories.  The  familiar  movement  of  British 
political  life  is  the  education  of  the  Tories  up  to 
that  point  when,  seeing  a  certain  reform  inevitable, 
they  come  to  the  conclusion  that,  having  got  into 
office  by  opposing  it,  they  had  better  keep  in  office 
by  adopting  it.  Liberal  statesmen  start  a  Liberal 
policy.  They  teach  it  ;  they  fight  for  it  ;  they 
bring  in  measures  to  establish  it ;  they  know  they 
have  the  country  with  them  ;  but  as  yet  they  have 
not  the  House  of  Commons,  and  they  are  defeated, 
and  they  go  out  of  office,  and  the  Tories  come  in. 
Then,  if  the  Tory  leader  be  any  thing  of  a  states- 
man, he  quickly  finds  out  that  the  cause  is  grow- 
ing and  gaining  in  the  country,  that  it  is  getting 
more  and  more  to  have  the  sympathy  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  that  it  must  win  before  long.     Thereupon 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION.  109 

he  is  forced  to  a  decision.  If  he  be  a  very  high- 
minded  or  scrupulous  sort  of  man,  he  declares 
that  he  never  can  consent  to  adopt  while  in  office 
a  measure  which  he  fought  against  when  out  of 
office,  which  he  obtained  office  by  opposing.  So 
he  resigns,  and  leaves  any  one  who  will  to  pro- 
pitiate public  opinion.  The  present  Lord  Salisbury 
has  done  this  more  than  once  already.  But  the 
idea  of  Mr.  Disraeli  was  rather  to  accept  the  inev- 
itable ;  not  to  trouble  one's  self  overmuch  about 
consistency ;  and,  if  the  people  wanted  reform,  to 
give  them  the  reform  they  wanted.  This  was  the 
policy  of  Tory  statesmen  before  Mr.  Disraeli's 
time.  Catholic  emancipation  was  first  fiercely  and 
furiously  resisted  by  the  Tories  ;  it  was  at  last 
carried  into  legislation  by  the  Tories.  We  have 
seen  what  Mr.  Disraeli  did  with  reform  in  1867. 
Having  succeeded,  with  the  help  of  the  Liberal 
secessionists,  in  turning  Lord  Russell  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  out  of  office  in  1866,  he  succeeded  to 
their  place  ;  and  he  brought  in,  and  carried,  a  much 
more  expanded  measure  of  reform  in  1867.  Now, 
the  Tories  may  tire  of  their  efforts  to  govern  Ire- 
land by  a  policy  of  coercion.  They  may  find  that 
they  cannot  do  it.  They  may  begin  to  shrink 
from   the   responsibility  for  too   much    shedding  of 


IIO  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

blood.  They  may  begin  to  see  that  Home  Rule 
is  inevitable.  Some  of  them  may  say,  "That  being 
so,  we  prefer  to  retire  from  office  altogether." 
Others  may  say,  "  If  it  has  to  be  done,  why  should 
we  not  stay  in  office  and  do  it?"  So  there  might 
be  a  re -organized  Tory  cabinet.  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill  might  come  back  to  power.  If  he  did, 
and  if  he  saw  any  advantage  in  adopting  the  cause 
of  Home  Rule,  he  would  not  be  deterred  from  doing 
so  by  the  fact  that  he  has  lately  been  denouncing 
Home  Rule.  Why  should  he  ?  He  was  not  de- 
terred from  denouncing  Home  Rule  by  the  fact 
that  he  had,  but  a  short  time  before,  been  advo- 
cating Home  Rule.  I  suppose  this  sort  of  thing 
seems  strange  and  shocking  to  a  foreign  reader. 
I  suppose  our  system  of  government  by  party  does 
not  bring  with  it  unmixed  blessing  and  credit. 
But  there  it  is  ;  and  we  have  not,  for  the  present, 
any  thing  to  put  in  its  place.  And  while  men 
remain  men,  some  of  them  will  always  be  found 
ready  to  prefer  office  to  dull,  pedantic  consistency, 
and  to  make  up  their  mind  that  if  anybody  is  to 
have  the  benefit  of  introducing  a  certain  measure, 
they  might  as  well  have  the  benefit  of  doing  so, 
even  although  they  enjoyed  the  benefit  of  oppos- 
ing and  defeating  it  on  a  former  occasion. 


WHAT  CAME   OF  OBSTRUCTION.  Ill 

I  need  hardly  say  that  the  ardent  hope  of  the 
whole  Irish  people,  and  of  all  English  Radicals, 
is,  that  the  great  man  who  has  risked  and  sacri- 
ficed so  much  in  the  cause  of  Home  Rule,  should 
be  allowed  by  Providence  to  crown  his  noble  career 
by  carrying  it  to  success.  We  shall  have  Home 
Rule.  We  want  it  from  the  hands  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, — "  welcome  from  any,  twofold  blest  from 
him." 


112  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    PROTESTANT    MINORITY. 

HAVE  often  been  asked,  and  in  perfect  good 
■*■  faith,  by  English  friends  who  were  not  indis- 
posed to  turn  with  sympathy  to  the  Irish  cause, 
What  security  could  you  give  for  the  rights  of  the 
Protestant  minority  under  an  Irish  national  Parlia- 
ment ?  Well,  I  should  say,  to  begin  with,  that  the 
Irish  Catholics  are  willing  to  give  every  statutable 
security  for  the  protection  of  the  Protestant  minority 
that  the  wit  of  man  can  devise.  We  said  this 
during  the  debates  on  Mr.  Gladstone's  Home  Rule 
measure.  "Give  us  a  statutory  Parliament,  and  put 
into  the  statute  that  creates  the  Parliament  any 
security  you  will  for  the  protection  of  the  Protest- 
ant minority,  and  we  shall  accept  it ;  for  we  wish 
the  Protestants  to  be  protected,  as  well  as  you  do." 
But  I  say  with  the  utmost  sincerity,  that  I  do  not 
believe  any  statutory  protection  would  really  be 
needed.     What  security  would    there    be    under  an 


THE  PROTESTANT  MINORITY.  113 

Irish  national  Parliament  for  the  protection  of  the 
rights  of  the  Protestant  minority  ?  What  security 
for  the  rights  of  the  men  whose  co-religionists  have 
at  all  times,  and  in  the  darkest  hours  of  our  Irish 
national  history,  taken  the  most  active  and  the  most 
splendid  part  in  the  championship  of  the  national 
cause  ?  Why,  I  say  that  if  the  living  were  unable 
to  protect  the  Irish  Protestants,  the  dead  in  their 
graves  would  prove  their  ample  shield  and  shelter. 
A  Roman  poet  has  pictured  Hannibal  as  guarded 
at  his  table  against  the  attempts  of  his  enemies 
by  the  shadows  of  his  great  victories.  The  Irish 
Protestant  is  forever  guarded  in  Ireland  by  the 
shadows  of  his  great  co-religionists  who  struggled 
and  sacrificed  and  died  for  the  national  cause.  The 
very  names  upon  the  gravestones  —  the  one  grave- 
stone in  Dublin  City  which  is  purposely  left  with- 
out a  name  —  would  be  a  protection  better  than 
any  statute  law.  The  names  on  the  tombs  of  Wolfe 
Tone  and  Edward  Fitzgerald  and  Thomas  Addis 
Emmet  and  Hamilton  Rowan  and  Smith  O'Brien 
and  Thomas  Davis  and  John  Mitchell  and  John 
Martin,  —  that  tomb  unmarked  by  a  name  which 
covers  the  remains  of  Robert  Emmet,  —  these 
would  alone  be  warrant  for  the  safety  of  Protest- 
ants   in    Ireland.       Time    has   added    to    these    the 


114  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

name  of  Isaac  Butt ;  will  add  to  them  the  name  of 
Charles  Stewart  Parnell.  Many  an  Irish  Catholic 
is  generously  jealous  of  the  noble  part  which  his 
Protestant  fellow-countrymen  have  taken  in  the 
struggle  for  the  Irish  national  cause.  Does  any 
rational  man  really  think  that  the  services  of  these 
patriots  could  ever  be  forgotten  in  Ireland  ?  Does 
any  one  suppose  that  Irishmen  are  so  unlike  all 
other  human  beings,  that  they  would  make  use  of 
their  legislative  freedom  to  oppress  the  co-religion- 
ists of  the  very  men  who  won  that  legislative  inde- 
pendence for  them  ?  No  ;  until  you  can  efface  from 
the  memory  of  Ireland  all  record  of  her  past  his- 
tory, until  you  can  sponge  out  of  the  Irish  heart 
that  feeling  of  gratitude  which  used  to  be  thought 
its  peculiar  characteristic,  there  will  never  be  needed 
any  protection  for  the  Irish  Protestant  other  than 
that  which  is  given  by  the  gratitude  and  the  sym- 
pathy and  the  love  of  his  Irish  Catholic  fellow- 
subject  and  brother. 

In  truth,  they  curiously  misunderstand  the  Irish 
cause  who  fancy  it  has  any  thing  to  do  with  the 
struggles  of  sect  against  sect.  The  clearest,  the 
most  striking,  evidences  can  be  given  the  other 
way.  Since  the  Home  Rule  parliamentary  party, 
under   that    name,    has    existed,    it    has    had    three 


THE   PR  O  TES  TA  NT  MI  NOR  I  TV.  1 1  5 

leaders.  The  Home  Rule  party  has  always  been 
essentially  democratic  in  its  constitution,  and  it 
elects  its  leaders  by  the  vote  of  a  majority.  The 
first  leader  chosen  was  Mr.  Isaac  Butt,  an  Episco- 
palian Protestant.  When  Mr.  Butt  died,  we  elected 
—  I  was  then  myself  a  member  of  the  party  —  Mr. 
William  Shaw,  an  Ulster  Presbyterian,  to  succeed 
him.  After  it  had  become  plain  that  Mr.  Shaw  was 
not  advanced  enough  for  the  position,  we  elected 
in  his  place  a  Protestant  Episcopalian,  in  the  per- 
son of  Mr.  Parnell.  Thus  far  the  party,  the  great 
majority  of  which  are  Catholics,  never  had  a  Catho- 
lic leader.  More  than  that,  it  never  had  a  Catholic 
leader  proposed  for  its  acceptance.  We  elect  our 
leader  every  year.  At  the  opening  of  each  session 
some  one  proposes  that  this  one  or  that  be  elected 
chairman  of  the  party ;  that  is,  leader.  Anybody 
can  propose  any  other  name.  No  Catholic  name 
ever  was  proposed  or  suggested.  I  think  this  is 
tolerably  clear  evidence  that  there  is  not  much 
sectarian  feeling  in  the  party  or  in  the  country. 
Of  course  it  would  be  said  that  of  late  years  Mr. 
Parnell's  qualifications  are  so  surpassing,  that  no 
fervor  of  Catholic  bigotry  could  think  of  dispos- 
sessing him.  Quite  true  ;  but  there  was  a  time 
when    the    party   were    not    so    certain,    when    the 


Il6  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

world  was  not  so  certain,  of  Mr.  Parnell's  qualifi- 
cations ;  when  he  was  new  and  untried ;  when 
some  thought  his  parliamentary  policy  all  a  mistake. 
There  was  the  occasion,  for  example,  when  he  was 
pitted  against  Mr.  Shaw.  He  was  elected  only  by 
a  small  majority  over  Mr.  Shaw.  I  spoke  on  that 
occasion  myself,  and  I  said  that  I  personally  would 
rather  not  make  any  change  at  such  a  time ;  that  if 
Mr.  Shaw  had  not  been  quite  a  satisfactory  leader 
up  to  that  moment,  it  was  perhaps  because  he  had 
not  entirely  understood  the  feelings  and  desires  of 
the  majority  of  the  Irish  people,  and  that  I  person- 
ally would  have  been  for  giving  him  another  chance. 
Since,  however,  Mr.  Parnell  had  been  proposed  as 
leader  of  the  party,  —  I  was  standing  as  I  spoke  just 
between  Mr.  Shaw  and  Mr.  Parnell,  —  I  could  not 
have  the  slightest  doubt  as  to  the  vote  I  was  to 
give:  I  should  unhesitatingly  vote  for  Mr.  Parnell 
as  the  man  best  qualified  to  lead  the  Irish  party, 
and  in  whom  the  Irish  people  had  the  fullest  con- 
fidence. I  mention  all  this  now,  only  to  illustrate 
the  fact  that  the  Catholic  members  of  the  party  — 
and  they  were  many  —  who  chafed  at  Mr.  Shaw's 
leadership,  never  thought  of  looking  about  for  a 
Catholic  to  lead  them.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
were  some,  not  a  few,  Catholics  then  in  the    party 


THE   PROTESTANT  MIATORITY.  Wf 

who  thought  Mr.  Parnell  far  too  extreme  a  man  to 
make  a  safe  leader;  but  none  of  them  put  forward 
a  Catholic  name.  In  fact,  the  question  of  Catholic 
and  Protestant  was  never  raised,  was  never  talked 
of,  was,  I  firmly  believe,  never  thought  of,  in  con- 
nection with  the  choice  of  a  leader  for  the  Irish 
parliamentary  party.  Yet,  if  there  were  any  feel- 
ings of  distrust  on  the  one  side  or  on  the  other, 
then  it  would  seem  was  surely  a  time  when  such 
feelings  must  find  some  sort  of  expression.  Those 
who  talk  about  the  rival  bigotries  of  Catholic  and 
Protestant  in  Ireland  are  talking  of  a  long-buried 
past,  or  they  are  talking  of  what  they  do  not  under- 
stand. There  are  the  Orangemen,  of  course,  and 
many  of  them  are  bigoted  and  savage  enough  in  all 
conscience ;  and  of  course,  as  is  inevitable,  by  show- 
ing themselves  bigoted  and  savage,  they  drive  some 
of  their  opponents  into  acts  of  retaliation.  But  no 
one  who  knows  Ireland,  really  believes  that  the 
Orangemen  represent  the  intelligence  and  the  re- 
spectability, the  good  feeling  and  the  patriotism, 
of  the  Protestants  of  Ireland.  The  Orangemen  of 
Ireland  are  a  very  small  number  of  men  when  com- 
pared with  the  population  of  the  country  ;  I  should 
as  soon  think  of  describing  the  old  Ku-Klux  organ- 
ization as  representative  of  the  people  of  America, 


Il8  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

North  and  South,  as  I  should  think  of  regarding 
the  bigotry  of  Irish  Orangemen  as  any  indication 
of  the  general  feeling  of  Irish  Protestants.  Then 
we  must  make  allowance  even  for  the  Orangemen. 
The  ascendency  of  sect  for  which  they  have  been 
struggling  so  long  and  so  fiercely  is  gone  forever, 
and  they  know  it.  All  their  political  hopes  have 
left,  or,  at  all  events,  are  leaving  them.  A  nation- 
alist sits  for  one  of  the  divisions  of  Belfast  itself. 
A  nationalist  sits  for  Derry  City.  Of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  province  of  Ulster,  a  majority  are 
nationalists.  Nationalism  has  a  majority  of  the 
population,  as  it  has  a  majority  of  the  representa- 
tion, of  Ulster.  Take  my  own  case.  I  sit  for  Derry 
City,  long  believed  to  be  the  very  stronghold  and 
fastness  of  Orange  ascendency.  In  Derry  City  the 
Catholics  are  far  indeed  from  having  a  majority 
of  the  votes.  If  it  were  a  question  of  Catholic 
against  Protestant,  I  should  not  have  had  the  small- 
est chance  in  Derry,  should  never  have  thought  of 
contesting  the  seat.  I  sit  for  Derry  by  virtue  of 
the  support  which  patriotic  Protestants  have  given 
me. 

Let  us  look  at  this  matter  from  another  point  of 
view.  Let  us  come  to  the  provinces  and  counties 
which  we  call  Catholic  distinctively ;    the  constitu- 


THE   PROTESTANT  MINORITY.  Iig 

encies  where  five  voters  out  of  six  are  Catholic, 
where  no  man  could  possibly  have  the  faintest 
hope  of  success,  except  through  the  favor  of  the 
Catholic  voters.  What  has  happened  in  many  of 
these  constituencies  ?  Protestant  Episcopalians  and 
Presbyterians  from  Ulster  have  been  invited  to 
stand  for  these  Catholic  constituencies,  and  now 
represent  them  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Who 
ever  said  during  all  that  time,  "  We  won't  have  a 
Protestant  ;  we  must  have  representatives  of  our 
own  faith  "  ?  The  Catholic  who  ventured  to  whis- 
per any  thing  of  the  kind  would  have  found  little 
welcome  from  his  neighbors  of  his  own  faith.  It 
was  very  significant,  and  very  touching  as  well, 
when,  during  the  debate  on  Gladstone's  Home  Rule 
Bill,  man  after  man  arose  from  among  the  Parnellite 
ranks,  and  began  his  speech  in  some  such  words  as 
these :  "  Mr.  Speaker,  I  rise  as  an  Ulster  Protest- 
ant to  advocate  this  measure  of  Home  Rule  for 
Ireland."  Nothing  is  more  extraordinary,  is  more 
misleading,  is  more  absurd,  than  the  manner  in 
which  some  writers  and  speakers  treat  of  what  they 
are  pleased  to  call  "Protestant  Ulster."  They  have 
created  for  themselves  an  entirely  imaginary  Ulster, 
an  Ulster  composed  of  anti-national  Protestants 
only,  an  Ulster  living  within  a  pale  of  anti-national 


120  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

sentiment,  an  Ulster  which,  in  the  event  of  any 
Home  Rule  scheme  being  introduced  and  likely 
to  pass,  would  pray  to  be  legislatively  annexed  to 
Scotland  rather  than  endure  companionship  with 
the  Irish  of  Leinster  and  Munster  and  Connaught. 
The  real  Ulster  is  an  Ulster  in  which  the  Catholic 
and  Protestant  populations  are  very  nearly  equal  in 
numbers,  and  are  for  the  most  part  mixed  up  inex- 
tricably. There  are,  of  course,  places,  like  certain 
divisions  of  the  city  of  Belfast,  which  may  be  called 
altogether  Protestant  ;  and  there  is  also  the  county 
of  Donegal,  which  may  be  called  altogether  Catholic. 
If  we  have  regard  to  politics  only,  we  shall  find  that 
of  the  Ulster  counties,  a  fourth  part  of  Down,  a 
third  part  of  Armagh,  half  of  Tyrone,  the  whole 
of  Donegal,  the  whole  of  Cavan,  and  the  whole  of 
Monaghan,  are  represented  by  nationalists.  Mr. 
Chamberlain  has  some  delightful  plan  for  exempting 
Ulster  from  the  rule  of  a  national  Parliament.  How 
will  he  do  it  ?  All  the  frontier  counties,  if  I  may 
call  them  so,  the  counties  which  draw  near  and 
nearer  to  Leinster  and  Connaught,  are  nationalist. 
I  suppose  he  would  hardly  say  to  the  inhabitants  of 
these  counties,  "  We  don't  care  what  you  think  or 
what  you  want ;  we  say  you  shall  not  be  joined  with 
the  rest  of  Ireland."     But  then  it  is  not  these  fron- 


THE  PROTESTANT  MINORITY.  121 

tier  counties  alone  that  are  nationalist.  Far  away 
to  the  north  there  is  Donegal,  entirely  Catholic 
and  entirely  nationalist.  Londonderry  and  Antrim 
are,  in  fact,  the  only  counties  where  any  case  could 
possibly  be  made  out  for  separate  legislation.  Well, 
but  we  had  South  Londonderry  in  the  last  Parlia- 
ment, and  only  lost  it  this  time  by  a  small  majority 
obtained  against  us  by  the  temporary  junction  of 
the  secessionist  Liberals  with  the  Tories.  Is  there 
nothing  to  be  said  for  the  national  sentiments  of 
the  minority,  who  are,  after  all,  only  a  minority 
in  name  and  in  the  parliamentary  sense,  of  the 
people  of  South  Londonderry  ?  And  then,  what 
about  the  majority  of  the  population  of  Derry  City, 
the  capital  of  the  county,  who  have  declared  for 
nationalism,  and  elected  a  follower  of  Mr.  Parnell  to 
be  their  representative  ?  What  is  ingenious  Mr. 
Chamberlain  going  to  do  with  them  ?  What  about 
the  population  of  the  western  division  of  the  city  of 
Belfast,  the  capital  city  of  Antrim,  who  have  em- 
phatically declared  for  nationalism,  and  elected  my 
friend  Mr.  Sexton  to  represent  them  in  Parliament  ? 
What  about  the  simple  fact  that  the  majority  of  the 
people  of  Ulster  are  in  favor  of  an  Irish  national 
Parliament  ?  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,  that  if 
the  question  be  left  to  Ulster,  and  to  Ulster  alone, 


122  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

if  the  plebiscite  of  all  the  men  of  Ulster  be  taken, 
and  Leinster,  Munster,  and  Connaught  stand  out 
and  are  silent,  the  voice  of  the  majority  of  Ulster 
men  will  proclaim  Home  Rule  for  Ireland.  Look  at 
the  absurdity  in  which  the  arguments  of  men  like 
Mr.  Chamberlain  involve  them.  So  profound  is 
their  distrust  of  Irish  Catholics,  so  rooted  their 
conviction  that,  if  these  Catholics  got  a  chance,  they 
would  delight  in  the  oppression  of  their  Protestant 
fellow-countrymen,  including  Mr.  Parnell,  of  course, 
—  so  strong  is  their  conviction  of  this  kind,  that 
they  would  not  consent  to  leave  the  Protestants  of 
Ulster  at  the  mercy  of  an  Irish  national  Parliament. 
Yet  the  Protestants  of  Ulster  are  many  and  strong ; 
they  have  wealth ;  they  have  energy.  We  are 
always  hearing  from  their  English  admirers  how 
far  superior  they  are  to  the  population  of  the  other 
provinces  ;  they  have  the  whole  Conservative  and 
Liberal  secessionist  party  to  watch  over  them,  to 
champion  their  interests,  to  secure  them  against 
wrong.  But  these  same  Liberal  secessionist  gen- 
tlemen are  perfectly  willing  to  abandon  the  Prot- 
estants of  Leinster,  Munster,  and  Connaught ;  the 
Protestants  who  in  many  places  are  not  in  the 
proportion  of  one  to  six  among  the  population. 
They  are   perfectly  willing  to  leave   these  Protest- 


THE  PROTESTANT  MINORITY.  1 23 

ants,  few,  scattered,  cut  off  from  Ulster,  —  they 
are  perfectly  willing  to  commit  them  to  the  mer- 
cies of  an  Irish  national  Parliament.  Good  gentle- 
men of  the  Liberal  secession  party,  you  know  very 
well  you  don't  mean  what  you  are  saying.  You  are 
not  half  so  bad  as  you  give  yourselves  out  to  be. 
I  do  not  like  Mr.  Chamberlain  now  as  well  as  I  did 
once,  but  I  do  not  believe  he  is  a  monster  of  in- 
justice and  inhumanity.  And  yet  what  but  a  mon- 
ster of  injustice  and  inhumanity  would  he  be,  if  he 
were  really  willing  to  abandon  the  Protestants  of  the 
South  and  West,  few  and  defenceless  as  they  are, 
to  a  tyranny  which  he  says  would  be  unendurable 
to  the  strong  and  numerous  Protestants  of  the 
North  ?  Of  course  he  would  not  do  any  thing  of 
the  kind.  He  knows  perfectly  well  that  the  Protest- 
ants of  the  South  would  be  as  safe  under  an  Irish 
Parliament,  as  the  Catholics  of  the  South.  He 
knows  very  well  that  the  Protestants  of  the  North 
would  be  equally  safe,  but  it  would  not  suit  him  to 
admit  that  now.  So  he  sets  up  an  entirely  imagin- 
ary Ulster,  and  he  tries  to  fan  again,  into  a  flame, 
the  dying  fires  of  religious  bigotry  and  sectarian 
antipathy  in  England  and  in  Ireland  too.  He  is 
a  clever  man,  and  he  is  not  weighed  down  with  any 
heavy  load  of  scruples  in   political  matters.     Also, 


124  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

he  is,  for  an  eminent  public  man,  singularly  ignorant 
of  the  history  of  any  thing  except  that  of  'modern 
Birmingham  ;  and  absolute  ignorance  makes  a  man 
very  bold  with  his  experiments  sometimes.  But 
he  will  never  get  Ii  eland  to  accept  his  imaginary 
Ulster ;  Ulster  herself  will  tell  him  so  if  he  really 
wants  to  hear  the  truth  of  the  story. 


THE  MAKING   OF  THE  NATION.  125 


CHAPTER   VIII, 

THE    MAKING   OF   THE   NATION. 

MEANTIME  I  am  glad  and  proud  to  say  that  the 
nation  is  making  itself.  Ireland  is  practising 
the  great  art  of  self-government.  She  is  training 
herself  in  every  way.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
at  no  other  period  of  Ireland's  history  did  Irishmen 
at  home  and  abroad  ever  fall  into  such  well-ordered 
lines  of  discipline.  The  disunion  among  themselves, 
the  internecine  quarrels,  which  destroyed  so  many 
hopeful  efforts  in  former  times,  are  unknown  in  this 
movement.  Many  hard  things  are  said  every  day 
about  the  Irish  parliamentary  party  by  its  enemies ; 
but  no  one  has  ever  said  of  it  that  it  is  not  a  well- 
disciplined  party.  No  one  who  looks  at  the  personnel 
of  that  party  can  possibly  doubt  that  there  must  be 
many  differences  of  opinion  among  the  men  who 
compose  it.  All  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  are  in 
that  party.  There  are  landlords  in  it,  not  a  few; 
and   there   are   the   sons   of    peasants.      There   are 


126  IRELAND'S  CAUSE. 

soldiers  who  have  won  distinction  in  the  service  of 
the  Queen ;  soldiers  who  won  distinction  in  the 
French,  the  Austrian,  the  American  army ;  there 
are  men  who  belonged  to  the  ranks  of  the  Fenian 
insurrection.  There  are  Irish-Americans  ;  there  is 
at  least  one  pure-blooded  Englishman.  There  are 
some  rich  bankers ;  there  are  clever  and  successful 
lawyers ;  there  are  one  or  two  working  artisans ; 
there  are  sharp,  shrewd  men  of  business ;  there  are 
journalists  and  novelists  and  poets  and  learned  pro- 
fessors. It  would  be  impossible  to  believe  that  a  party 
thus  made  up  could  always  find  itself  in  spontaneous 
agreement  of  opinion.  Yet  the  party  always  meets 
the  House  of  Commons  as  a  united  party ;  as  one 
man.  The  explanation  of  this  is  that  the  Irish  party 
debate  every  question  in  their  private  meetings,  and 
"bolt  it  to  the  bran,"  the  youngest  and  rawest  recruit 
having  as  good  a  right  to  be  heard,  and  obtaining  as 
ready  a  hearing,  as  the  most  distinguished  of  the 
veterans ;  and  the  discussion  is  sometimes  keen  and 
warm  enough.  And  when  all  who  desire  to  speak 
have  spoken,  the  leader  of  the  party  then  gives  his 
opinion,  or  else  he  declares,  as  he  has  often  done, 
that  it  is  a  subject  on  which  he  prefers  the  guid- 
ance of  the  party  without  expressing  any  opinion 
of  his  own ;  and  then  a  division  is  taken,  and  the 


THE  MAKING   OF   THE  NATION.  \2J 

party  is  bound  by  the  fundamental  principle  of  its 
constitution  to  abide  by  the  vote  of  its  majority. 
So  the  nationalist  Irish  members  come  out  from 
their  committee-room,  and  pass  into  the  House  of 
Commons ;  and  when  the  division  is  taken,  they 
vote  as  one  man.  Keen  is  the  curiosity,  the  anxi- 
ety, the  eagerness,  felt  all  through  the  House  of 
Commons,  on  the  eve  of  some  great  division,  about 
the  vote  of  the  Irish  party.  Sometimes  there  are  rea- 
sons which  make  it  proper  and  necessary  to  keep  our 
decision  a  secret  to  the  last  moment ;  and  when  this 
is  resolved  on,  the  secret  is  faithfully  kept.  All  this 
is  training  for  self-government :  all  this  is  self-gov- 
ernment. Then  take  the  institutions  of  Ireland  her- 
self. The  only  really  representative  bodies  we  have 
are  the  corporations  and  town  councils  of  the  large 
cities.  What  has  happened  in  these  assemblies? 
Although  the  municipal  franchise  is  even  still  a  very 
narrow  and  restricted  one  in  most  of  our  commu- 
nities, yet  the  national  party  have  taken  possession 
of  nearly  all  those  corporate  bodies.  Wherever 
there  is  any  reality  in  the  representative  system, 
there  the  electors  send  nationalists  to  represent 
them.  No  one  can  deny  that  the  cause  of  muni- 
cipal government  has  benefited  immensely  by  the 
change   from    the    condition    of    things   when   only 


128  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

Tories  and  old-fashioned  "  Whigs,"  as  they  are 
called  in  Ireland,  had  possession  of  our  corporate 
bodies.  The  same  healthy  breath  of  national  public 
opinion  which  purified  the  representation  has  puri- 
fied also  the  atmosphere  of  municipal  life.  Town 
councils  which  were  hotbeds  of  jobbery  and  some- 
thing like  corruption  then,  are  above  suspicion  now. 
It  is  to  the  honor  of  the  present  municipal  legis- 
lators, who  are,  of  course,  Catholics  in  the  great 
majority,  that,  although  they  have  succeeded  to 
men  who  always,  when  they  could,  would  contrive 
to  shut  out  Catholics  from  every  sort  of  public 
employment,  they  have  never,  in  the  smallest  in- 
stance or  in  the  largest,  where  public  employment 
was  concerned,  made  the  slightest  difference  be- 
tween the  services  of  Protestants  and  the  services 
of  Catholics.  No  one  who  knows  the  places  —  no 
one  who  saw  such  cities  a  few  years  ago,  and  has 
seen  them  lately  —  will  deny  that  the  nationalist 
town  councils  have  shown  a  capacity  and  an  energy 
for  public  work  which  certainly  was  not  known  to, 
or,  at  all  events,  was  not  exhibited  by,  their  pred- 
ecessors. Great  public  improvements  have  been 
made,  public  funds  have  been  managed  economi- 
cally, sanitary  arrangements  have  been  introduced, 
which  would  do  credit  to  the  greatest   of    English 


THE  MAKING   OF   THE   NATION.  1 29 

cities.  The  bitterest  anti-nationalist  would  not 
think  of  making  such  charges  against  the  corpora- 
tion of  the  city  of  Dublin  as  those  which  were 
lately  made,  and  which  formed  the  subject  of  public 
scandal  and  public  investigation,  against  the  cor- 
poration of  the  city  of  London.  Our  boards  of 
guardians  are  not  representative.  At  least,  they 
only  admit  the  principle  of  representation  half  way 
—  not  quite  half  way.  The  majority  of  the  mem- 
bers of  these  boards  are  nominated  by  the  Crown  ; 
a  certain  number  are  elected  by  the  people,  but 
on  a  somewhat  narrow  franchise.  Where  the  rep- 
resentative principle  prevails,  the  nationalist  candi- 
dates are  always,  or  almost  always,  elected.  Our 
grand  juries  are  an  institution  which  I  trust  is 
unknown  to  any  other  civilized  people.  As  Sydney 
Smith  humorously  said,  when  speaking  of  the  Irish 
State  Church  in  the  old  days,  "  Nothing  that  we 
know  of  the  internal  condition  of  Timbuctoo  would 
warrant  us  in  supposing  that  the  people  of  that 
country  would  put  up  with  such  an  anomaly."  An 
Irish  grand  jury  is  not  only  a  tribunal  of  first 
instance  in  criminal  law,  but  it  is  also  the  financial 
body  intrusted  with  the  raising  and  the  spending 
of  money  for  road-making,  bridge-making,  and  all 
other  such  county  works  ;  and  it  is  a  body  nominated 


130  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

by  the  county  sheriff,  who  is  himself  nominated  by 
the  Castle.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the 
Irish  national  party  do  not  command  a  majority  in 
the  grand  juries.  Indeed,  this  fact  in  itself  may 
be  said  to  tell  the  whole  story.  Where  the  people 
elect,  the  national  party  always  have  the  majority. 
Where  the  Castle  appoints,  good  care  is  taken  that 
only  men  are  employed  whom  the  people  would 
never  elect.  We  had  a  curious  instance  lately,  in 
Dublin,  of  the  manner  in  which  even  old  castle 
strongholds  have  to  yield  sometimes  to  the  change 
in  the  condition  of  things.  Dublin  City  has  a  right 
to  appoint  her  sheriff  in  this  way  :  The  corporation 
submits  to  the  lord-lieutenant  the  names  of  three 
men,  and  the  lord-lieutenant  selects  one  of  the 
three.  This  plan  worked  most  satisfactorily  for 
the  Castle  and  the  British  garrison  party,  so  long 
as  the  city  council  was  altogether  in  the  hands  of 
the  Tories  and  the  Whigs.  The  sort  of  men  from 
whom  the  Castle  would  always  be  glad  to  choose 
were  invariably  submitted  to  the  choice  of  the 
Castle.  But  now,  behold,  the  condition  of  things 
is  entirely  changed.  The  Dublin  town  council  has 
only  a  very  few  members  who  are  not  stanch  Home 
Rulers ;  and  last  year  the  council  astonished  the 
Castle  by  presenting  as  the  three  names  from  which 


THE  MAKING   OF   THE   NATION.  131 

the  selection  for  the  sheriff's  office  was  to  be 
made,  the  names  of  Mr.  Sexton,  Mr.  Dillon,  and 
Mr.  Healy.  What  was  to  be  done  ?  Mr.  Dillon  was 
actually  then  under  prosecution  by  the  Castle ;  Mr. 
Healy  and  Mr.  Sexton  were  the  avowed  and  un- 
compromising enemies  of  the  whole  Castle-system. 
All  three  men  had  been  in  prison  on  some  political 
charge  or  other,  or  else  under  Mr.  Forster's  Suspi- 
cion Act,  when  a  man  could  be  imprisoned  against 
whom  no  charge  was  made,  or  was  even  intended 
to  be  made.  What  was  to  be  done  ?  The  lord 
lieutenant  had  to  choose,  the  Act  of  Parliament 
said  so ;  the  Act  which  was  made  at  a  time  when 
there  was  as  little  thought  of  a  nationalist  town 
council  in  Dublin  as  of  popular  government  in 
Siberia.  The  lord  lieutenant  saw  no  better  way 
out  of  the  difficulty  than  by  appointing  Mr.  Sexton, 
over  whose  head,  at  all  events,  no  castle  prosecution 
was  hanging  just  at  that  moment.  Not  many  cities, 
I  think,  have  a  great  orator  for  their  high  sheriff. 
Every  one  remembers  how,  in  the  immortal 
"  Monte  Cristo "  of  the  elder  Dumas,  the  prisoner 
of  the  Chateau  d'lf  tries  through  all  the  horror  and 
the  darkness  and  the  wasting  weariness  of  his  cell, 
to  keep  up  his  physical  strength  by  physical  exer- 
cise.    He  has  set  his  heart  on  escape.     He  believes, 


132  IRELAND'S   CAUSE. 

with  a  kind  of  passionate  faith,  that  sooner  or  later 
he  is  to  be  free ;  and  he  is  determined  that  the 
moment  which  finds  him  free  shall  find  him  also 
a  strong  and  a  capable  man,  ready  to  defend  his 
friends  and  to  punish  his  enemies.  I  have  some- 
times thought  that  what  is  told  of  Edmond  Dantes 
might  be  told  in  a  manner  of  Ireland.  During  the 
long  term  of  her  imprisonment  the  mind  of  the 
country  was  set  on  enfranchisement,  and  was  deter- 
mined to  be  able  to  make  fitting  use  of  legislative 
independence  when,  in  the  mercy  of  Providence,  the 
hour  for  legislative  independence  should  come.  So, 
through  all  these  years,  the  Irish  people  have  been 
training  themselves  for  the  work  of  self-government 
in  order  that  there  may  be  no  delay ;  that  they  may 
be  ready  when  the  time  comes.  Thus  we  see,  under 
our  very  eyes,  the  forming  of  a  nation  going  on. 
When  the  day  comes,  and  it  is  but  a  short  way  off 
now,  on  which  the  imperial  Parliament  shall  say  to 
Ireland,  "We  emancipate  you  from  subjection;  we 
give  you  your  own  Parliament :  go  and  form  your- 
selves into  a  nation,"  Ireland,  speaking  with  pride 
for  her  people,  can  say,  "Behold,  we  are  a  nation 
trained  and  taught  —  self-trained,  self-taught  —  for 
all  the  responsibilities  and  all  the  work  of  a 
nation." 


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